Milkman in Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge

May 09, 2019 Sophie Brookover rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019-read, grown-up-novels, favorites-of-all-time

Well, this book both ended my life & filled my soul. It's dense, luscious, bleak, dreadful (as in every page is filled with dread, to the point that sometimes you'll be reading and will suddenly realize "oh, I haven't drawn a breath in the last 5 pages, whoops, better inhale"), astringently funny, confounding, circuitous, enraging, and just the teensiest, weensiest bit hopeful.

In an unnamed city (Belfast) during an unspecified time (the late 1970s), our nameless narrator (middle sister) claws h Well, this book both ended my life & filled my soul. It's dense, luscious, bleak, dreadful (as in every page is filled with dread, to the point that sometimes you'll be reading and will suddenly realize "oh, I haven't drawn a breath in the last 5 pages, whoops, better inhale"), astringently funny, confounding, circuitous, enraging, and just the teensiest, weensiest bit hopeful.

In an unnamed city (Belfast) during an unspecified time (the late 1970s), our nameless narrator (middle sister) claws her way through months of being caught in the crosshairs of a high-ranking paramilitary (the milkman, not to be confused with another actual milkman of her acquaintance).

None of her usual strategies for keeping herself assiduously to herself -- reading 19th century novels while walking around the neighborhood, keeping her relationship with a sweet mechanic a few neighborhoods away a secret from her family, making sure to partner up with her brother-in-law when she goes running -- are working to keep the milkman off her back. He knows her schedule and he knows who her mechanic ("maybe-boyfriend") is & casually threatens him with a car-bombing.

As the milkman continues his implacable, awful "courtship" of middle sister, rumors that they're already together start swirling around the neighborhood, wreaking havoc with all of her other relationships and very tenuous peace of mind.

This is a book about survival in a nearly impossible place & time. Its pleasures are not guilty, but certainly implicating. Here you are, reading this book and desperate to know how it wends its way to its conclusion (alluded to in the first page), and all the while you're thinking "ughhhhh this book is so good I really want to know how it's going to get where it's going and also I feel a little bit gross because this fictional but plausibly real woman's anguish is so palpable". The uncomfortable tension is part of the point.

I recommend reading MILKMAN after reading Patrick Radden Keefe's masterful weaving together of true crime & sociological reporting, SAY NOTHING. I also recommend it as a solid readalike for Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels. If you like dense, allusive historical fiction that immerses you in a very distinctive & often uncomfortable milieu and point of view, this should ring your bell. ...more

6 likes · Like · see review

Aug 30, 2020 Astrid Lim rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: europe, man-booker, book-club, award-winner, war, popsugar-2020

Oh wow. This book has so many important issues, from the war in Ireland in the 70s, the psychological effects as well as the socio-cultural effects of the war. It covered a fascinating array of problems, characters, and snippets of the stories of the people in Belfast.

But the writing style, OMG it's just torturous for me XD Half ingenious and half self indulgent, Anna Burns perhaps is a brilliant writer and deserved all the awards that she can get, BUT... her writing is not enjoyable at all. Ful ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Feb 17, 2019 Cat rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction, booker-prize-winners, tob

Paragraph breaks, please! As a courtesy to the mother of 3 kids, one of whom is 3 months old, and reads in 5 minute bursts and can never enter and exit this book in a polite way, but instead gets completely consumed and feels like she is drowning.

1 like · Like · see review