Milkman
Anna Burns's 2018 Booker Prize winner is set in an unnamed city in late seventies Northern Ireland, in a community where everyone is identified only by family role or proximity, third sister, maybe-boyfriend, milkman. The narrator, called Middle Sister, is eighteen years old, walks while reading nineteenth century novels to keep the present at arm's length, and finds herself stalked by a high-ranking paramilitary figure known as the milkman. He never touches her, but his attention alone is enough to mark her as suspect within her own neighborhood, where rumor moves faster than the truth and any deviation from the unspoken rules can get a person killed. Burns writes in long, recursive, often very funny sentences that mimic exactly the way a young woman survives a panopticon by talking herself in circles. The novel is a startlingly original portrait of life inside the Troubles.
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What you might want to know about Milkman
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
An eighteen-year-old girl in 1970s Belfast is approached by an older married paramilitary called only the milkman. She has done nothing to encourage him. The community decides she has, and the rumors do the rest.
Yes. Milkman won the 2018 Booker Prize. It was Anna Burns's third novel and her first internationally celebrated work.
Yes. Milkman uses an unbroken first-person voice with no character names (everyone is identified by their relationship), set in unnamed Belfast during the Troubles. The first chapter is famously demanding. Most readers find the rhythm clicks within 50 pages.
Milkman was written by Anna Burns, published in 2018 by Graywolf Press.
Milkman is 368 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Milkman takes most readers 6 to 8 hours to finish.
Milkman is a standalone novel by Anna Burns, not part of a series.
Milkman is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
