21st Century Literature discussion
This topic is about
Milkman
2019 Book Discussions
>
Milkman - Whole Book (spoilers allowed) (June 2019)
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Marc
(new)
-
rated it 5 stars
Jun 14, 2019 10:21PM
Mod
reply
|
flag
Mod
BOOKS NARRATOR READS or MENTIONS
Ivanhoe
Brothers Karamazov
Tristram Shandy
Vanity Fair
Madame Bovary
The Overcoat (Gogol)
Castle Rackrent
Mary Celeste
Canterbury Tales (dream she turns into Reeve)
Jane Eyre
Martin Chuzzlewit (only book taken from her by “state forces”)
Dream about Proust
Persian Letters
Some Considerations on the Causes of Roman Greatness and Decadence
BOOKS/AUTHORS WEE SISTERS READ/REQUEST
Virginia Woolf
Hardy
Kafka
The Exorcist
Marc wrote: "Close-but-potentially-not-exhaustive list of books mentioned in Milkman:BOOKS NARRATOR READS or MENTIONS
Ivanhoe
Brothers Karamazov
Tristram Shandy
Vanity Fair
Madame Bovary
The Overcoat (Gogol)..."
I can't imagine trying to read any of those while walking!
Mod
Marc wrote: "It's like weight-lifting---you build up to those. ;-)"There's no way I could weight-lift while walking either!
Mod
Marc wrote: "We can read with the Wee Sisters then--stationary and indoors. :-)"PERFECT!
I had forgotten the wee sisters read such heavy (literally and figuratively!) books! Dang!
Mod
Marc wrote: "Precocious little women, no? I was trying to make something in my head out of their embracing 20th century lit (when their older sister rejects it), taking to the streets and crossing literal and f..."I definitely had the feeling that their future was more positive than our narrator's! They gave me hope!
Mod
Mod
I did see the ending as (surprisingly) upbeat. Milkman hangs over the entire narrative like a dark cloud; once he's gone, things start to return to something approximating normal. The family sets aside their back-biting and gossip to help mom land a fella. The wee sisters and other girls from both sides of the partisan divide are all imitating the famous dancers - although, notably, the boys still play at "throwing miniature anti-personnel devices". Third sister seems to sum up and largely put paid to the entire nightmare with the simple "Oh, but you do lead an exciting life, middle sister." I thought the final line expressed the change of mood without tipping over into Pollyannish optimism by saying that Middle Sister "almost nearly laughed".
I agree with that assessment, which is a "sort of twisted happy ending." Everything returning to normal is questionable, in that normal is screwed up -- as in twisted.
Elaine wrote: "I agree with that assessment, which is a "sort of twisted happy ending." Everything returning to normal is questionable, in that normal is screwed up -- as in twisted."What a great way of summarizing the ending!
I was pleased with how things turned out with "the real milkman" and glad Middle Sister got out of her relationship with both maybe-boyfriend and Milkman, but not exactly happy ending resolution in regards to how she got out of them. And you don't get the feeling that just since Milkman is out of her life everything is ok in her world. But I left feeling slightly hopeful things would get better for Middle Sister. That she'd literally survived.
So so pleased with Somebody McSomebody getting a thrashing.
I was delighted that the sisters all seemed to know what each one brought to the family. The little ones were fed, and between them all, they managed to counteract all of their mother's "yes-buts" when they were convincing her to rejoin the world.I thought it definitely had an upbeat feel, although the whole situation with names and forbidden streets, etc, would persist.
Mod
Whitney wrote: "I did see the ending as (surprisingly) upbeat. Milkman hangs over the entire narrative like a dark cloud; once he's gone, things start to return to something approximating normal. ..."I agree. Also there were continual uplifts that kept me going, just the right measure of sun breaking through, along the way--the tender care that the real milkman shows toward her, including his utter acceptance of his cat's head responsibility--the lovely reveal scene when she learns maybe boyfriend is gay--and the way the other women rally to her side when Somebody MacSomebody attacks her. Also, her dog survived the massacre. That was a good choice on the author's part imo.
This read was so perfect for me, partly because of these 'beats' of optimism that the author wisely provides along the way, that I discovered I wasn't ready to re-visit the novel yet when it was the group read here.
Lark wrote: "Whitney wrote: "I did see the ending as (surprisingly) upbeat. Milkman hangs over the entire narrative like a dark cloud; once he's gone, things start to return to something approximating normal. ...."I can't remember the last book that I loved quite this much. This thread is so great for reminding me of that :)
Mod
I agree!
Yes, I loved this book -- so glad to have had the opportunity to read it with the group as I didn't think I'd like it! But I was hooked from the opening sentence/paragraph and read it in a few days.
Mod
What a stunning, altogether wonderful novel. The bookish narrator, 18-year-old “Middle Sister,” tries to navigate late adolescence and daily civil war violence in 1970s Belfast. Once a middle-aged IRA bigwig (nicknamed Milkman) starts sneakily stalking her, she has to somehow contend with not only sexual harassment but the gossipy and menacing suspicions of her closed society. If she spurns the stalker, will her family and/or her “Maybe Boyfriend” be killed? The characters are left nameless and descriptions of their physical appearance, class or jobs are intentionally sparse to nonexistent. But it is that much more of a tribute to the author’s skill that this somehow manages in this rare case to heighten the story’s mystery and universality. The prose is musical, rhythmically hypnotic, when not laugh-out-loud hilarious. When a colleague caught me immersed in the book on a train platform, she compared me to a monk or rabbinical student oblivious to anything beyond the book inches from his nose. In its last half, the shining stars are the narrator’s “Wee Sisters” – the spirited, intellectually voracious threesome who leave you feeling breathless but hopeful after reading this lovely masterpiece. Gregory
Mod
Kind of ironic that the only character whose real name is used is Milkman, but his real name is so generic no one suspects!
As absurd as it sounds even the "beyond-the-pale women" get concessions with the men broadening the scope of rape to include a range: "full-, three-quarter-, half-, or one-quarter-."
What did readers make of our narrator's change?
"I went back to walking. Not to reading-while-walking."
Marc wrote: What did readers make of our narrator's change?"I went back to walking. Not to reading-while-walking." ..."
Quite a transformative month or so in the life of an 18 year old woman. Really a Bildungsroman condensed. How has she changed? Much more connected to her mother and siblings. More connected to the world around her. As in walking without reading.
The entire novel is in Middle Sister's voice, except for a few passages in italics. (The biggest exception is the tablet girl's letter to her other self hidden in the belly of the rag-doll. Definitely a different voice.) I think she is learning what love looks like. She observes other people in love. Her twin (?!!) brother and tablet girl's sister; maybe- boyfriend and chef; her sisters and brothers-in-law; and finally her mother. She learns to understand "wrong spouse" very thoroughly. Mr. Milkman and maybe-boyfriend and McSombody are the "wrong spouse" for her. Her father was the wrong spouse for her mother. Hence depression. The political troubles are a setting and an influence, but not the story.
Many passages have a build-up to exaggeration; hyperbole. This for me became a tall story. A legend. An allegory. Lovers in a dangerous time. Loved this one:
"Sister exploded into advanced asterisks, into percentage marks, crossword symbol signs, ampersands, circumflexes, hash keys, dollar signs, all that ‘If You See Kay’ blue french language.
I agree wholeheartedly that the novel's last few pages mostly point toward changes ahead. But that all seemed at risk when [after learning about Maybe-Boyfriend and Chef] Middle Sister numbly gets into Milkman's van and is told he will take her out for god-knows-what the very next day. Regression or just a novelist's dramatic setup to deliver huge relief when he's killed before they can meet again?Regardless, her heads-up walking, solidarity with the women clobbering McSomebody, and general fascination with the emigre International Couple suggested to me that she too might be leaning toward building a new independence abroad -- just as the young Anna Burns did.
Mod
I loved this book--and am grateful to this group for learning about it. I felt the ending was as hopeful as could be in the current political situation: I thought middle sister had a chance at a decent life and more self-esteem. Her adult voice seemed to indicate that she learned from her experience and matured. I thought the death of Milkman was a little too convenient but I was so pleased by it I didn't care. I was sorry to see her give up reading-while-walking (something I loved to do when I was young--although like Patty not these kinds of heavy (in both senses of the word) works.
Gregory wrote: "Regression or just a novelist's dramatic setup to deliver huge relief when he's killed before they can meet again? ..."As she climbs into the van, she thinks "that sensation of ‘not going freshly into that place of terror’ settled upon me once more." Wondering about the origin of this quote (once again?), I found it in two other places in the novel. The first is in the last words of her father dying, when he speaks of the sexual abuse he suffered as a child and which caused his depression and his inability to love his wife. Re-reading this passage, I see that middle sister's response to Milkman re-enacts her father's response to his rapist. Her father says
..so he may as well have me ‘cos he knew all along he was going to have me, couldn’t stop him from having me. All shut down. Get it over with. Not going freshly into that place of terror, which was why, wife, it never felt right between me and you.’She thinks
Here I stumbled and it was then the white van drew up alongside me. The passenger door opened and that sensation of ‘not going freshly into that place of terror’ settled upon me once more.Her father describes his physical reaction the same way the narrator does. Ripples and numbness in the legs. His abuser is "crombie", a coat.
‘That crombie, those suits, that crombie. Nobody wore crombies, brother,’ and again wee sisters tugged at me. ‘Did he,’ da then asked, looking straight at me and seeming for a moment fully to comprehend me, ‘Did he … rape you, brother … as well?’
Thank you for taking the time to clarify the use of that clause, Ginny. I too loved this book and hope to read it again.
Mod
We can continue to chat about the book, but just wanted to pause and say thanks to everyone who joined in for this discussion and glad so many of us enjoyed it!
Mod
Marc wrote: "Wow, Ginny, I missed that parallel entirely! I did wonder why she decided to get in the van when she previously describes it as a kind of line she won't cross. It's like she gives up or realizes there's some kind of inevitability to it all...."Yes. She is devastated by her discovery of maybe boyfriend and chef, not, I think, because of their homosexuality, but because she trusted them and they used her. It's as if the last support she had to resist Milkman has been knocked out from under her.
Mod
"No more capitulation such as the night before when I got beat town enough, had become indifferent to my fate enough as to have stepped inside his van. Most of all there would be no more worry about ex-maybe-boyfriend being killed by a car bomb. So it was, while standing in our kitchen digesting this bit of consequence, that I came to understand how much I'd been closed down, how much I'd been thwarted into a carefully constructed nothingness by that man. Also by the community, by the very mental atmosphere, that minutiae of invasion."
"... a carefully constructed nothingness... "
Such a wonderfully terrifying way of describing it.
