Milkman

I seem to have a little tradition going with the first novel I finish in a year being the Man Booker prize winner of the previous year. In 2018, Anna Burns won the Man Booker for Milkman (I have an older print run of the novel which mentions it being 'shortlisted'). I really wanted to read this novel even before it won the Man Booker, because it looks beautiful (yes, I fall for a good cover image) and because the blurb text made me curious. But then I read Normal People by Sally Rooney, which is about a couple living in Ireland trying to make it work despite social differences. I thought Milkman was more of the same; a Northern Irish story about a girl trying to make a relationship work in difficult times. So I set it aside for a short while, because I didn't want to mix the two novels up in my head.
Well, I needn't have troubled myself. Milkman is completely different from Normal People, in terms of plot, style, characters or themes. It is so much darker, more complicated, but at the same time lighter and more joyous. The story is set during the Troubles, with the protagonist living in an unnamed Northern Irish town, trying to make things work while she is besieged by political and social issues on the one side, and her family trying to get her married and more normal on the other. We never find out her name. We hardly know anybody's name, come to that. People are 'first sister' or 'longest friend' or 'real milkman'. Then there are 'the renouncers' and 'the country over the water'; the references to the Troubles are rife, but the military actions are not described as something horrible or even especially out of the ordinary. They are part of life; people know how to deal with them, they stick together in their very tight-knit community, and sometimes someone dies. Actually, a lot of people die. But this is a fact of life, in the seventies, in this Northern Irish city.
There is hardly any dialogue in the novel. The pages are filled from top to bottom and from left to right with text, big blocks of text that seem daunting at first. But when you start to read, when you get into them, you find that these long flowing sentences actually make up a pretty good story, are logically connected, and that even though they are long, they make sense in their own way, sense because of the comma's that have you come up for breath and sense because after a while you get into the mindset of this main character, this unknown girl that is telling us her story. See what I did there? The whole novel is like that. It reminded me of Ulysses, the difference being that this novel is actually readable.
So what actually happens? Not all that much, really. The protagonist tries to keep her life going, all the while telling us what that life is like. She is being followed, amongst others, by Milkman, one of the top renouncers. Gossip starts up that she is actually his lover, while in fact she is dating 'maybe-boyfriend' from another district. This is a conservative, religious community, and she should be properly married at this ripe old age of 18. But it is not the gossip that gets her down, she isn't really interested much in what anyone thinks of her. In the end, the constant fear of being followed by Milkman, of having him appearing and disappearing suddenly, makes her stumble and fall. This breakdown is described beautifully, with the narration following the main character's mental state. The creeping, sliding suspicion that someone is always watching you, following you, finding out everything about you gets into your pores after a while.
But then, as I said, this story is lighter and more joyous than Normal People. Anna Burns doesn't make it heavy, she doesn't dwell on the hard stuff. She manages to show the absurdity of the whole Irish conflict, but also of the social conventions and out-dated ideas about dating and marriage, without being outright ironic or demeaning. In a sense, this novel is the epitome of mindfulness; stuff happens, just let it flow by.
In my opinion, this is a very deserved Man Booker winner. It is a lot to get through, it took me almost a month to read, but in the end, it is a very rewarding experience. This is literature, experimental as it is, and the story is timeless and unique. I didn't agree with the 2016 and 2017 Booker winners, but I have to agree with the judges here; Milkman is one of the best novels I've read in a long time.