The vibrant pinks and oranges of the cover.
Its status as a winner of the Man Booker Prize (2018).
The back of the book, where the first two sentences read as follows: “In an unnamed city, middle sister stands out for the wrong reasons. She reads while walking, for one.”
Being an aficionado of reading-while-walking, the book called my name. Despite the fact that people read from their phones while walking all the time, strangers routinely make comments—for better or for worse—on my apparently odd behaviour, so I felt a personal connection to the central character and the author immediately.
The main character’s relatable affectation was the tip of the iceberg. As I dove into the book, I found the writing style, characters, plot, and themes of the text completely engrossing. Even though the pace of the book is slow, the narratological style repetitive, and the digressions into minutiae numerous, I felt compelled to read on. The compulsion is rare to find and, to me, is a good indicator of how finely wrought this book is.
Allow me to begin with the premise of the story. Despite not being named, the milieu is central to the novel. The country is under immense political and religious duress; ideological divides and the resultant instability mean that many teenage citizens try to restore control over their lives by joining with local paramilitaries—and most families have at least one dead child as a result. Knowing that Burns hails from Northern Ireland biases me somewhat into believing that the story takes place in the Troubles of the 1970s, but the story has a universal quality that could easily set the story in areas of post-war strife like, say, Berlin or Palestine. Ultimately if Burns had wanted this to be an Irish-specific tale, she would have identified the city by name.
Despite having a historical framework, I found myself frequently destabilized by the little details that pop up. For instance, middle sister’s maybe-boyfriend (this is how he is referred to throughout the novel) obtains a car part that comes from “across the water” (i.e. it’s a supercharger from a Bentley) and it’s seen as a scandal. There seems to be mistrust between both the U.S. and Russia, positioning the characters as in the midst of the Cold War, though their conflict is more localized—more immediate.
These factors create an atmosphere of paranoia and suspicion. The words of middle sister establish the framework for the story succinctly:
“These were knife-edge times, primal times, with everybody suspicious of everybody. You could have a nice wee conversation with someone here, then go away and think, that was a nice, unguarded conversation I just had there — least until you start playing it back in your head later on. At that point you start to worry that you said ‘this’ or ‘that’, not because ‘this’ or ‘that’ were contentious. It was that people were quick to point fingers, to judge, to add on even in peaceful times, so it would be hard to fathom fingers not getting pointed and words not being added, also being judged in these turbulent times, resulting too, not in having your feelings hurt upon discovering others were talking about you, as in having individuals in balaclavas and Halloween masks, guns at the ready, turning up in the middle of the night at your door” (27-28).
The characterization of the milieu as “knife-edge” times is just excellent, and the way that middle sister characterizes those knife-edge times is wonderful. I love the deployment of a vague haze, like her use of ‘this’ or ‘that’, devoid of concrete examples. As a bit of a missed opportunity I think it would have been great to say that you worry about saying ‘this’ or ‘that’ not because ‘this’ or ‘that’ were contentious but because you were meant to say ‘that’ when you said ‘this’ and ‘this’ when you were supposed to say ‘that’. The style encapsulates the vague haze of the society and the adopted anonymity when times are so uncertain. Characters are generally not given names; for one, certain ‘cultural’ names are forbidden, but also, given the rates of premature death, why give names beyond ‘eldest sister’ or ‘second brother-in-law’.
Ultimately, these knife-edge times drive the plot. While reading-while-walking, middle sister is approached by Milkman (not a milkman), who seems to have intimate knowledge of her and her family’s history. His presence is a threat in its own right, but it incites rumours that he and middle sister are in a relationship, that she is in high political standing, locally, by proximity to a paramilitary, and so on. Middle sister is already “beyond the pale” because of her reading-while-walking habits, but Milkman stalking her now makes middle sister’s mom paranoid that she isn’t getting married, incites doubt in her maybe-boyfriend (who, incidentally, it’s intimated will be on the receiving end of Milkman’s car bomb), and her local entanglements get increasingly complex.
The main beats of the story are simple. Each chapter is rooted in one of middle sister’s interactions with Milkman and Anna Burns turns the screw each time. That said, the tangential stories provide rich characterization and ‘world-building’, as it were. Lest I give the impression that the book is predominantly historico-political, that serves as the backdrop but the story is essentially human.
For instance, middle sister is in a maybe-relationship with maybe-boyfriend and the two are in perpetual, understated conflict. They have a routine, but not being necessarily official nor planning necessarily to wed, their relationship is in perpetual peril. It’s also a secret, which is a cause for her mother’s anxiety and feeds into the rumours that middle sister is involved with Milkman. There’s a colourful cast of characters, each of which inspire sympathy and repulsion. Off-putting to the neighbourhood, one boy is always singing doom and gloom about nuclear weapons—until he’s murdered. Another girl poisons people in the neighbourhood for mysterious reasons. The characters are provided with rich backstories in nearly every case. Even maybe-boyfriend’s parents are given a darkly comic background that made me feel invested in their lives. They decide to abandon their children to pursue careers in showbusiness:
“They had written a note, said the neighbours, but had forgotten to leave it; indeed primarily they had forgotten to write it and so had written it then forwarded it back from their undisclosed destination when they reached it, not deliberately undisclosed but because they hadn't time or memory or understanding to put a sender's address at the top. According to the postmark it was not just a country over a water, but a country over many, many waters. Also, they forgot their former address, the house they'd lived in for twenty-four years ever since getting married until twenty-four hours earlier when they left. In the end they'd hazarded the address in the hope the street itself might sort things out for them and, thanks to the resourcefulness of the street, it managed to do just that. It forwarded the letter to their offspring and this letter, after it had done the rounds of the neighbours before reaching the hands of the brothers, said: 'Sorry kids. Seeing things in right relation we should never have had children. We're just off dancing forever. Sorry again - but at least now you're grown up.' After this, there was an afterthought: ‘Well, those of you who aren't grown up can be finished by those of you who are - and look, please have everything- including the house.' The parents insisted their boys take the house, that they themselves didn't want it; that all they wanted was what they had with them — each other, their choreomania and their numerous trunks of fabulous dancing clothes. The letter ended, 'Goodbye eldest sone, goodbye second elder sone, goodbye younger sone, goodbye youngest sone - goodbye all dearr lovelyy sones’ but with no signature of ' parents' or 'your fond but lukewarm mother and father'. Instead they signed it 'dancers', then there were four kisses, after which the sons never heard from their parents again. Except on TV. Increasingly this couple would be on TV, because they proved themselves, despite middle age, exceptional youthful ballroom-dancing champions. (39)
Apologies for the lengthy passage, but I think it reflects a few of the quirks of Burns’ writing. There’s the repetitive language and sentence structures that recycle details over and over—perhaps there’s a Beckettian lilt to the work in that respect—that comes across as hypnotic, but also lively and full of personality. The ‘voice’ is so distinct, and in addition there’s a dark humour to the passage. The seriousness of the parents abandoning their children is undercut by their blasé attitudes as dancers and I find that disconnect fantastic.
The disconnect also works in reverse. In a chilling flashback scene, middle sister’s father is in hospital and the perception of humour skews the scene darker. It’s revealed throughout the text that her father was mentally unwell, and middle sister has a distinct memory of a confession—a secret shared between them. When talking about his pain, Da mentions his backside, and “wee sisters giggled” (56). He talks about how the pain “kept coming, kept repeating, kept being awful, [his] whole life through” (56). He then expounds on his life in a self-effacing, self-abnegating way that is just awful to witness, particularly because middle sister’s mom is determinedly unsympathetic to Da’s mental illness. He explains, “there had been a recklessness, wife [...] an abandonment, a rejection of me by me that had begun years earlier — I was going to die anyway, wouldn’t live long anyway, any day now I’ll be dead, all the time, violently murdered — 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” (56). It becomes clear that Da underwent significant sexual trauma in his younger years, but wee sisters don’t understand, so they continue to giggle throughout the scene. The wee sisters find humour in funny words (like “buttocks”), but are oblivious to the darkness taking place at the moment: '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?’ (56). The complex family dynamic is given some additional tension, but the psychological turns are best left to the author.
The entire novel, though, explores the psyche of characters so beautifully, with middle sister being developed particularly well. Her personality (and the milieu) comes through in the narration with an odd mix of sophistication and naivete. For instance, her vocabulary is advanced but conceptually she is still sometimes woefully innocent—for example, she sees her own life as being constructed by other peoples’ rumours, but doesn’t recognize that the same might be true of poisoner girl. That said, her consciousness of how things are is generally profound.
There’s a section I found absolutely heart-wrenching, but too long to quote in its entirety here. Essentially, middle sister goes through a conscious process of prolonged dissociation. She actively chooses to render herself an expressionless void of a person. She recounts the process of emptying herself out over several uninterrupted pages. She likens the process to the adage told when making a face: you’re going to get stuck like that. That happens to her spiritually. Not wanting to confirm or deny rumours about her, she responds to everything with “I don’t know.” It’s a tragic passage that is elevated by Burns’ deft hand. [cf. pp. 175-179].
Essentially, the section reflects at the individual level what middle sister had noticed of their society as a whole, but you go in with the expectation that she is somehow different, beyond the influence of her society’s deadening effect. She notes, “So shiny was bad, and ‘too sad’ was bad, and ‘too joyous’ was bad, which meant you had to go around not being anything, also not thinking, least not at top level, which was why everybody kept their private thoughts safe and sound in those recesses underneath” (91). Incidentally, this is brought up in relation to her father: “We thought, because we were told, that whenever he disappeared he was off to long hours of work, long days of work, lengthy weeks of work in some faraway town or country or, if not that, that he was seeing some specialist doctor far away because of the pains he was getting in his back. But it was mental hospitals, and it was mental breakdowns, which meant cover-up, which meant shame, which meant even more shame in his case because he was a man” (91).
In any case, the novel revolves around themes of perception and what we are willing to admit to ourselves. In one crucial scene, a French teacher challenges one of the most basic truths we tend to learn: the sky is blue. They read a poem that gives a poetic response to the sky and nobody is willing to admit that more is possible. Using such a juvenile example as a starting place, it becomes emblematic of the text’s deeper themes:
“Of course we knew really that the sky could be more than blue, two more, but why should any of us admit to that? I myself have never admitted it. Not even the week before when I experienced my first sunset with maybe-boyfriend did I admit it. Even then, even though there were more colours than the acceptable three in the sky – blue (the day sky), black (the night sky), and white (clouds) — that evening still I kept my mouth shut. And now the others in this class — all older than me, some as old as thirty -– also weren’t admitting it. It was the convention not to admit it, not to accept detail for this type of detail would mean choice and choice would mean responsibility and what if we failed in our responsibility? Failed too, to the interrogation of the consequence of seeing more than we could cope with? Worse, what if it was nice, whatever it was, and we liked it, got used to it, were cheered up by it, came to rely upon it, only for it to go away, or be wrenched away, never to come back again? Better not to have had it in the first place was the prevailing feeling, and that was why blue was the colour for our sky to be. Teacher though, wasn’t leaving it at that. (70-71).
In rewriting that passage, it occurs to me that there’s a thematic connection to one of my favourite books of all time, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. This refusal to admit what we secretly know—to both be told and not be told—that fills our lives with so much tragedy is illuminated here. The officially mandated colours of the sky are clearly insufficient, but because the characters feel their happiness to be so precarious that they dare not embrace that which is more beautiful. The idea of not being able to cope with the loss of the sky’s colours is a poetic, heartbreaking turn.
The theme extends into their romantic lives. There’s a motif throughout the book of people having, essentially, a true love and then the person they actually marry for practical and political reasons. Again, its reminiscent of Never Let Me Go in that respect, but it’s articulated beautifully here in its own right. In particular, there’s a section at the end where middle sister’s mother is faced with the decision to pursue the milkman (not to be confused with Milkman, of course). He is probably her proper love, but then is essentially told by the local women to give him up so that a long-suffering woman can lay claim to him instead. It’s painful and sincere and just a beautiful turn in the final pages of the book. Incidentally, file this book under: “books that have a perfect final sentence.”
Actually, there are so many excellent moments and vignettes throughout the book. When maybe-boyfriend criticizes middle sister for her voiding, it’s a powerful conflict. She narrates, “At first I was stumped which gave him time to fit in extra charges of an unattractive numbed state he had observed was creeping over me, that he felt was starting to invade and possess me, saying it was as if I was no longer a living person but one of those jointed wooden dollies that artists use in — which was when I had to stop him because I couldn’t bear for him to finish on my growing numbed condition only to start in on my face” (193-194). The fact that he turns on her for that is a powerful moment, followed up a few pages later [cf. 199-202] by him confronting her on her reading-while-walking habit.
So, what is the problem with reading-while-walking? A number of characters, well-intentioned and not, challenge her behaviour. It’s largely framed as being apolitical, or anti-political, in a time that one cannot afford to be. Third brother-in-law, for example, speaks to her seriously not about Milkman, but about her reading:
“he embarked on a careful disquisition that I guessed he'd been having for some time in his head. This was on the subject of my reading-while-walking. Books and walking. Me. And walking. And reading. That thing again. [...] 'It's that I think, said third brother-in-law, 'that you should not do that, that it's not safe, not natural, not dutiful to self, that by doing so you're switching yourself off, you’re abandoning yourself, that you might as well betake yourself for a stroll amongst the lions and the might tigers, that you’re putting yourself at the mercy of hard and cunning and unruly dark forces, that you might as well be walking with your hands in your pockets–-' 'Wouldn't be able to hold the book then—’ ‘Not funny. he said, 'It's that anybody could sneak up. They could run up,' he emphasised. 'Drive up. Good godfathers, sister-in-law! They could dander up, with you — defences down, no longer alert, no longer strenuously reconnoitring and surveying the environment and if you’re reading aloud—’ [...] This was getting ridiculous. 'But if you're undertaking the unsafe procedure of reading-while-walking and cutting off consciousness and not paying attention and ignoring your surroundings…” (58).
I adore these passages (and there are several) where people voice their critiques. The idea that reading is positioned as a withdrawal is, in my mind, backward, but given appropriate attention as a criticism. I also love the phrasing and dismissive attitude of middle sister: “Books and walking. Me. And walking. And reading. That thing again” is just a perfect rejection of peoples’ criticism. When he later brings up the walking-while-reading criticism again, she starts to make objections: “‘Okay,’ I said. ‘’So if I were to stop walking-while-reading, and hands in pockets, and little night torches, and instead looked right and left and right again for dangerous, unscrupulous forces, does that mean I’ll end up happy?” (63). The sentence which follows is just brutal: ““It’s not about being happy,’ he said, which was, and still is, the saddest remark I’ve ever heard” (63). The way that Burns takes such a simple premise as walking-and-reading and transforms it into something so symbolic is finely crafted, especially when given voice by her central character. Again I find myself reflected in her:
“It was my opinion that with my reading-while-walking I was doing both at the same time. And why should I not? I knew that by reading while I walked I was losing touch in a critical sense with communal up-to-dateness and that, indeed, was risky. It was important to be in the know, to keep up with, especially when things here got added on to at such a rapid compound rate. On the other hand, being up on, having awareness, clocking everything—both of rumour and of actuality—didn’t prevent things from happening or allow for intervention on, or reversal of things that had already happened. Knowledge didn’t guarantee power, safety and relief—leaving no outlet for dispersal either, of all the heightened stimuli that had been built by being up on in the first place. Purposely not wanting to know therefore, was exactly what my reading-while-walking was about. It was a vigilance not to be vigilant, and my return to exercising with brother-in-law, that too, was part of my vigilance” (65).
You have likely inferred by now that this novel has a philosophical bent to it. I think—and I may be overreaching here—that classic literature walks the balance of the narrative, the aesthetic, and the philosophical. At times, the philosophical can be outright heavy handed (consider for instance the treatise George Orwell embeds into 1984). But the best novels have a gentle touch where the philosophy and the narrative compliment one another. In my mind, Burns has achieved that balance and Burns has created a classic.
The fog of war that surrounds the novel allows for all kinds of observations about perception, identity, fate, hope, and epistemology. I was drawn in particular to the reflections on perception and Burns’ suggestion of the jamais vu, a blanking out of that which cannot be accepted (in Ishiguro terms: being both told and not told). Middle sister is concerned about the renouncers forcing on her a comprehensive and thus conflicting opinion of them. She says:
“This is what happens when doors swing open on inner contraries. Impossible then, with all these irreconcilables, to account, not just politically-correctly, but even sensibly for oneself. Hence, the dichotomy, the cauterising, the jamais vu, the blanking-out, the reading-while-walking—even my consideration of whether to forgo the current codex altogether for the safety of the scroll and papyrus of earlier centuries. Otherwise, if unmediated forces and feelings burst into my consciousness, I wouldn’t know what to do” (113).
This willed lack of complexity is a compelling idea to consider from the perspective of epistemology and returns us once more to the idea of the sky having more than three potential colours. The way that Burns navigates the individual amid the political is so perceptive, so persuasive, I found it hard to resist.
Essentially. The intertwining of the milieu with the plot with the themes—and heck, even the narrative voice—makes the whole experience aesthetically gratifying in every respect, so much so that in attempting to the book justice I’m consistently failing. Milkman is a one-of-a-kind reading experience, though it would likely appeal to fans of Ishiguro for its more human themes, Roberto Bolaño’s By Night in Chile meets Miriam Toews’ a complicated kindness for its milieu, or even Beckett or Joyce for its language. Being a book so finely honed and being a book like no other, I feel that Milkman has earned my highest praise. It’s the kind of book I want to force on all my most thoughtful friends and on all my most engaged students. I love its sweet, slow burn.
Really happy reading! This book is an absolute achievement.
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