Milkman by Anna Burns

At the time, age eighteen, having been brought up in a hair-trigger society where the ground rules were – if no physically violent touch was being laid upon you, and no outright verbal insults were being levelled at you, and no taunting looks in the vicinity either, then nothing was happening, so how could you be under attack from something that wasn’t there? At eighteen I had no proper understanding of the ways that constituted encroachment.

There are no names in Anna Burns' Milkman; instead, we know characters by their places in the narrator, middle sister's, universe (maybe boyfriend, wee sisters). Milkman, the titular character, is not really a milkman, but he drives a truck, and so has been given the nickname (although whether by middle sister or the community at large, it is hard to tell). The novel tracks his increasingly terrifying stalking of middle sister in a small town in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. 

Burns has an almost Faulknerian (or perhaps, more aptly, Joycean) style; middle sister's inner narrative is rambly and dream-like and tumbles for pages and pages without paragraph breaks. Because there no one and nothing is named (political groups, places, and people alike), it's hard to navigate what she's talking about or to anchor the novel in a particular place or time. I don't know much beyond what Wikipedia has to say about the Troubles, and I found it hard to keep track of the various warring factions, especially because it was rarely clear who was doing what. This is, perhaps, the point. The experience of a relatively a-political citizen in the midst of that type of political conflict would likely be deeply confusing. The violence and fear is coming from all sides, and the name or political affiliation of the aggressor doesn't change how it makes you feel. 

As the novel progresses and milkman's advances continue, I found myself more and more furious with middle sister. She had ample opportunities to extricate herself or at least explain her situation to any number of characters (her mother, maybe-boyfriend, her childhood friend), and instead she lets rumors build and swirl around her. Middle sister is funny and cuttingly observant at times, but is also infuriatingly oblivious at others. She is pulled under by the tide of gossip and veiled threats to the point of paralysis, and it's hard to witness. 

Stylistically, this was one of the more challenging books I've read in the past year or so, but I really enjoyed it. I found myself having to backtrack several pages whenever I picked it back up because the narrative was so rambly, but I enjoyed the work. Middle sister, while I wanted her to be more vocal in her self-advocacy, was funny and endearing and in the end, likeable (but not too likeable!).