Milkman by Anna Burns

The realism of this unreal novel is unbearably chilling; yet at times Anna Burns achieves a zany humour. To avoid thinking of the sectarian violence and sexual bullying that she's supposed to accept as normal, the 18-year old female protagonist reads while she walks. Soon this eccentric and socially unsanctioned behaviour causes neighbours to gossip. As another form of escape, she resorts to running. The story darkens as the violently sectarian "Milkman" begins stalking her. For the narrator, changing her route and practice means allowing "religious geography" to constrain her movements. The implicit threat to her is exacerbated by the gossip mill, which inists, without a grain of truth, that she's the lover of the married, middle-aged renouncer of the government.

Meanwhile, the community, including her mother, fail to acknowledge his creepy encroachment on her space. Trained to be polite, the besieged woman finds herself unable to brush off the man: the stalker claims to know her brothers and her father, so must be deemed safe.

In this time and place, "violence was everyone's gauge for judging everyone else." References to routine fighting, drunkenness and violence begin in the first lines of the novel. They hit harder as the the narrator piles on images of decimated families, riots and shootings, like that of "Somebody McSomebody's brother." The protagonist chooses her "maybe boyfriend" because he doesn't get involved in it.

Danger besets this narrator at every turn, and as an intelligent young woman, she does what she can to protect herself. Unfortunately, her carefully constructed protective mechanisms backfire. Her unusual practices (walking while reading, running in the park) are snatched away by the predatory behavior of the Milkman. By then, the emotional walls she has erected have begun to alienate her not only from her nosy neighbours, but from herself.

The description of the suffocating society she inhabits comes out in language like this: "A whole chivvy of mothers trying to get their daughters wed." In this mad place, even for the girl's mother a marriage to a "bigamous terrorist" will do, if it will save her daughter's reputation.

Burns uses the powerful technique of anonymity, never mentioning the specifics of time, place or person. Instead, she refers to the people of the "other religion" who live "over the road," while those who have left the country have gone "over the water." We never learn the name of the protagonist, who refers to the people in her life as Maybe-boyfriend and French Teacher, Tablets Girl and Nuclear Boy, first brother-in-law, second little sister, and so on. Thus the reader can both intuit the real setting and ponder the universal nature of the deeply flawed society Burns so chillingly portrays.

The tension ran high through this book; I both wanted and dreaded to find out what would happen. Yet I couldn't possibly have predicted or even imagined how it would end until it did. Anna Burns grew up in Belfast during the Troubles, and this novel won the 2018 Booker Prize.

Implications of Illeism

Image of Anna Burns from The Independent

Booker winner Anna Burns mentions "ear bashings from those who speak of themselves in the third person plural." Referring to oneself in the third person is called illeism. Except in young children, it's considered egotistical, unsavoury, even pathological. Chris Bourn gives some background and a dissenting view. But these discussions are about third person singular. Only the Queen can call herself we, and that's just a quirky historic precedent.

More bons mots from Diana Athill

The great London editor Diana Athill (think Jean Rhys, John Updike, Margaret Atwood, Norman Mailer, Mordecai Richler, Mavis Gallant, Philip Roth, VS Naipaul, Simone de Beauvoir) was also a talented writer. Her first book, a memoir, came out in the 1960s under the title Instead of a Letter. Fifty years on, Granta published her correspondence with American poet Edward Field as Instead of a book: Letters to a friend.  

Here are some of her epistolatory gems:

"I don't see the singingness of words entirely as an evil, although it can certainly lead writers astray."

In reference to the Fellows' Common Room at All Souls: "an exquisitely comfortable book-and-print-lined room, marinated in centuries of intellectual privilege."

Aging Fellow John Sparrow's little verse (quoted below) struck her as being "like a spell against decay:"

I'm accustomed to my dentures
To my deafness I'm resigned
I can cope with my bifocals --
But oh dear! I miss my mind.

Reading a book about postwar economics, she comments that although "one never ...had much time for politicians, but the extent of their idiocy when fully revealed is gobsmacking."

Delighted at Edward's having dedicated a book to her, she comments, "poems, like short stories, are difficult to read...because you read one and go greedily on to the next one, and the next and the next, until you realize that your eyes have started bouncing off them without taking them in."

The Hay Literary Festival, held in Hay-on-Wye, Powys, Wales she calls "much the nicest of all the literary festivals." This year it goes from May 23 to June 2, and Anna Burns will be there.

The Reading Edge: Books Read in 2019

In 2019, I read 124 books, beating my 2018 total of 109. In 2017, I read 126.

January
James Clear                       Atomic Habits

Lilia Momple                    Neighbours, the Story of a Murder

Anna Burns                       Milkman (CD)

Jordan B. Peterson            Twelve Rules for Life (CD)

PM Forni                            Choosing Civility (skimmed and made notes)

Mark Cote                          That Lucky Old Son

Alexander McCall Smith    The House of Unexpected Sisters

Kagise Lesogo Molope        This Book Betrays my Brother (re-read in order to teach at SFU)

                                                                                                                                         
February
Alexander McCall Smith    The Colors of All the Cattle

Derek B. Miller                  The Girl in Green

Diana Athill                       Alive, Alive Oh! and other Important Matters

Tana French                      The Likeness (CD)

Diana Athill                       Midsummer Night at the Workhouse and other Stories

Iain Reid                            Foe

March
Tana French                      The Trespasser (CD)

Diana Athill                       Somewhere towards the end

Lisa See                             Dragon Bones

Donna Leon                       Through a Glass Darkly (relistened for SFU course)

Sue Grafton                       X (relistened, for SFU course)

Jack Knox                         On the Rocks with Jack Knox

Charles Cumming             The Moroccan Girl

Alan Bradley                      The Golden Tresses of the Dead (CD)

Ian Rankin                        Watchman (quit partway through)

Diana Athill                       Instead of a Book

Diana Athill                       Stet

Tana French                      The Secret Place                

Gloria Steinem                  My Life on the Road (Audio)

Ross Macdonald                The Ivory Grin (a Lew Archer novel) (Audio)

Henning Mankell               Chronicler of the Winds (skimmed last of this tragic allegory)

Sarah Waters                     The Night Watch (Audio)                                                               

April
Michael Kluckner              Julia (graphic novel about Julia Henshaw)

Lisa See                             The Island of Sea Women (CD)

Sally Rooney                      Normal People (audio)

Sheila Kohler                     Once we were Sisters

Alexander McCall Smith    The Good Pilot Peter Woodhouse

Abir Mukherjee                  A Necessary Evil

Jhumpa Lahiri                   The Namesake (audio)

Val McDermid                   Forensics

Jhumpa Lahiri                   Unaccustomed Earth (audio)

Abir Mukherjee                  A Rising Man                                                                          

May
Ann Patchett                     State of Wonder (CD)

Anne-Marie Drosso            Hookah Nights

Anne-Marie Drosso            Cairo Stories

Jhumpa Lahiri                   The Lowland

Nathaniel Brandon            The Six Pillars of Self-esteem

Alain de Botton                  The Course of Love

Ovidia Yu                           The Frangipani Tree Mystery

Victoria Zackheim ed.        Faith: essays from believers, agnostics and atheists

Peter Robinson                  Careless Love

Daniel Kahneman              Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow (audio)

Abir Mukherjee                  Smoke and Ashes (audio)                                                               

June
Diana Athill                       Instead of a Letter

Elif Shafak                         Black Milk

Maureen Medved               Black Star

Gail Honeyman                  Elinor Oliphant is Completely Fine (skipped over last bit)

Alain de Botton                  A Week at the Airport

Alain de Botton                  Status Anxiety

CS Lewis                            The Silver Chair CD

Graeme Simsion                The Rosie Result

Val McDermid                   Insidious Intent

Val McDermid                   Trick of the Dark

Josephine Tey                    The Daughter of Time

Rupert Sheldrake              Science and Spiritual Practices

Peter May                          The Blackhouse

Fred Vargas                       Wash this Blood Clean from my Hand

Colin Cotterill                    Six and a Half Deadly Sins (CD)                                                       

July
Ariana Dagnino                 The Afrikaner

Jennifer Robson                The Gown (CD)

Edna O’Brien                     The Little Red Chairs (Audio)

Manuel Matas MD             The Borders of Normal 

Rachel McMillan               The White Feather Murders (didn't finish)

Mike Simmons                   Episodes from Iceworld 

Terry Fong                         Princeton: a Love Story

Edna O’Brien                     The Love Object (CD) [heard first 8 CDs only]

Iona Whishaw                    Death in a Darkening Mist

Edward Gibbon                 The Rise & Fall of the Roman Empire I (Audio)

Gianrico Carofilio              The Past is a Foreign Country

Gianrico Carofilio              Involuntary Witness

Ian Hamilton                     The Disciple of Las Vegas

Derek B. Miller                  Norwegian by Night

Josephine Tey                    Sands of Time

Kate Atkinson                    Big Sky
Ann Shortell                      Celtic Knot                                                                                

August
Qiu Xiaolong                     Shanghai Redemption

Jess Kidd                           Himself

Peter Carey                        True History of The Kelly Gang                                            

September
Peter Carey                        Illywhacker (finished at home in October)

Chris Cleave                      Incendiary

Jane Harper                      The Dry

Jane Harper                      Force of Nature (CD)

Dervla McTiernan              The Ruin

Adrian McKinty                 The Chain

Adrian McKinty                 The Cold, Cold Ground

Ovidia Yu                           The Betel Nut Tree Mystery

Iona Whishaw                    A Killer in King’s Cove                                                               

October
Elly Griffiths                      The Dark Angel

Iona Whishaw                    It Begins in Betrayal

Iona Whishaw                    An Old Cold Grave

Iona Whishaw                    It Begins in Betrayal

Iona Whishaw                    A Deceptive Devotion

Shelley Wood                     Quintland Sisters (Audio file)

Peter May                           The Chessmen (CD)

Adrian McKinty                 Police at the Station and They don’t Look Friendly (CD)

Richard van Camp             Moccasin Square Garden

Maude Barlow                   Whose Water is it Anyway?                                                

JoJo Moyes                       Still Me (CD)

Adrian McKinty                 Police at the Station and they Don’t Look Friendly (CD)

Adrian McKinty                 I Hear Sirens in the Street (2 of Troubles Trilogy)       

Adrian McKinty                 In the Morning I’ll be Gone 

Adrian McKinty                 Gun Street Girl                                                                       

November
Adrian McKinty                 Rain Dogs (CD)

Jakob Arjouni                    Brother Kemal

Jane Harper                      The Lost Man                    

Kate Atkinson                    Transcription

Adrian McKinty                 Hidden River

Nicola Upson                     An Expert in Murder (first one featuring Josephine Tey)

Jacqueline Carmichael      Tweets from the Trenches

Dervla McTiernan              The Scholar (CD)                                                                   

Ben Macintyre                   Operation Mincemeat (CD)

Jennifer Egan                    Manhattan Beach                                                                  

December
Derek B. Miller                  American by Day

Renee Knight                     Disclaimer                        

Mark Manson                    Everything is Fucked: a Book about Hope
Kevin Barry                       Night Boat to Tangier
Naomi Wood                     Mrs. Hemingway (didn't finish)                                                

The Cold Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty

Young and well-educated, Officer Sean Duffy works among mature provincial colleagues for the Carrickfergus police in Northern Ireland. It's 1981, and Belfast is burning. The lone "Catholic" in a station of "Proddies" (though the cops are not religious), Sean observes the false categories and black and white thinking as his station is challenged with a rash of apparent anti-gay killings and a seeming suicide.

The funeral of Bobby Sands is over. With other hunger strikers dying in the Maze, an obdurate Thatcher cuts short a Belfast visit, reiterating her refusal to "negotiate with terrorists." Meanwhile, strict social divisions are enforced by threats and violence: Catholic or Protestant, Orange or Green, from here or from "over the water." Like Anna Burns in Milkman, McKinty uses such chillingly simple phrases to telegraph extreme social tensions.

Sean Duffy wants only to solve certain crimes and prove himself. He senses the first three deaths are connected -- to each other and to the political situation. True, homosexuality is illegal, and gays are pariahs, but he reasons ironically that Northern Ireland "doesn't do hate crimes." Anyone who wants to kill, he tells his colleagues, just joins one of the paramilitary organizations.

Along with the two murdered gay men, a young woman was found hanged, an apparent suicide. But the pathology report is ambiguous, and also reveals that she recently gave birth. She's the divorced ex of a long-jailed IRA operative. For Sean, her death smacks of political revenge rather than the standard Irish trope of guilt and depression caused by having an "illegitimate" baby.

In this tale of twists and turns, the first of the Troubles Trilogy, the author portrays his setting with an unerring voice. As well as capturing a unique time and place, this novel raises universal social questions along with tension-building story questions. Fortunately, the fascinating but deeply flawed Sean Duffy returns in future works, where the reader can see what he's learned from his first foray into Carrickfergus policing.

I found this novel far more convincing and thought-provoking than Adrian McKinty's more recent work, The Chain. I look forward to reading the sequels to follow Sean's development as a character trying to survive in a bizarrely challenging place and moment in history.