Fifty Books Project 2023

Maybe-boyfriend then said 'Stop.  Stop, chef.  We can't do this .  We can't keep doing this."  Then, in support of his words, his hand came up and again pushed chef's hand away.   So he pushed, but he returned, then maybe-boyfriend pushed again, not strongly.  Then he halted.  There was no cursing, no "Fuck off, chef, What are you doin?  I'm not like that."No surprise either between them, the surprise and unexpectedness at what was happening in that kitchen between those men were turning out to be only so for me,  And now maybe-boyfrine, after pushing chef off, stopped and he took hold of this other man's arms and with his own eyes still closed, he held them.  He leaned into them, into chef's middle, with chef bending over till his face was in maybe-boyfriend's hair.  

As Christopher and Chloe have already discussed, much of the tension around this book centers on things we don't know - most prominently the names of the characters.  They are given names based on their activities (either to reveal activities like "chef" or "real Milkman" or to hide activities like "Milkman" who is not a milkman, but an IRA gunman) or on their relationships to each other ("middle sister," "wee sisters," "almost boyfriend").  Clearly, this is an excellent set-up for a bildungsroman and it is what people come to know that matters in the end.

Our narrator has tried hard not to know things, but is constantly having to admit that she does know.  She knows the distance between parts of the city and knows enough to measure that distance in both time walked and moral uncertainty.  She knows that her mother is unhappy and that it is her clinging to the community values of false piety that are making her unhappy.  And she knows there is no apparent way for her to avoid that piety.  The community and the church will ignore the violence and corruption of Milkman and his ilk, but condemn any woman who dares imagine something other than marriage and children.

In the end it is what she has not known that brings the book its most satisfying plot point - and it is full of satisfying plot points.  She goes to maybe-boyfriend to finally agree to get rid of the maybe and walks in on him with his strange friend, chef, to discover that their friendship is not strange at all, but loving.  By then she has helped her mother see her mother's long-repressed love for real Milkman - the only character in the book with the courage to stand up to Milkman and the paramilitaries.  This unites her with her mother (given their life-long argument, it can hardly be called a reunion) as she has also reconciled with her sisters and her brother-in-law.  It is not a coming-of-age story in which a child learns and leaves the family, it is a coming of age story in which a child learns how to live with her family.

Just a note on the style and its pleasures:  this is a voice driven novel and the voice is wonderful.  It is all digression and tangent, characters are not named, and neither is their dialogue accurately reported either:  when she is feeding the wee sisters dinner too slowly, they complain "Middle sister!  Please hurry.  Will you not hurry?  Modes amounts please.  But cannot you be more instanter than that?"  There are delights like that throughout - touching details and awkward moments of affection juxtaposed with macabre and frightening hints of violence.  We come to see the community so clearly because we see it through this one totally unique consciousness.