An interesting take on the Troubles

Milkman, by Anna Burns, Faber, $32.99. Reviewed by Cal Revely-Calder.

This is not exactly Belfast. The ‘‘renouncers’’ here aren’t exactly the IRA, the ‘‘defenders’’ aren’t exactly the army. Yes, it’s the 1970s, and we’re in a ‘‘hairtrigger society’’ of bomb scares, hijackings, talk of ‘‘our community’’ and ‘‘their community’’, electrified signals ‘‘of murals, of traditions, of newspapers, of anthems’’, right up to the spectre of ‘‘the soldiery, the paramilitary’’ – but nothing must be named.

In Milkman, the darkly comic novel by Anna Burns that won this year’s $94,000 Man Booker Prize, names are black magic, and silence is better. You might call this place a region, or a province, or six counties, or the North of something else – but whatever you say, you’ll brand yourself. Not even our narrator has a name.

We find out she’s 18, female, a middle sister, even that her community is among those ‘‘renouncers’’ – ‘‘the only time you’d call the police in my area would be if you were going to shoot them’’ – but it’s a mystery how she was baptised. Her dog can have a name (Lassie), as can her classmates at night school, but her ‘‘maybe-boyfriend’’ cannot. The world of Milkman is one where communal bonds are truer than those of the heart.

And yet, for all her selfcensored narration, ‘‘middle sister’’ is thought to have unreliably starry eyes. But this is a place where no one has time for kooks. Milkman is a ‘‘renouncer’’, and a ranking one at that. He causes a plot to emerge in the narrator’s life, by stalking her – she doesn’t know why, and does nothing to lead him on – which, in turn, triggers a wave of gossip and innuendo. Soon, she’s suspected of being ‘‘the little Frenchwoman, the arriviste, the hussy’’, of entering ‘‘paramilitary groupiedom’’. Six actual groupies collar her in the club lavatories, and rhapsodise chummily about the glamour of it, the buzz.

The pace of Milkman is leisurely at best, because its narrator experiences the plot as an entirely unwelcome event. When she’s not avoiding Milkman – joining her on her run, pulling up to offer her a lift – she’s bumbling about, trying to ignore everyone’s sour looks. All the better for us – Burns has time to paint a colourful social scene, full of ‘‘beyond-the-pales’’ into whose ranks our heroine is tossed.

The standout character is the narrator’s mother, instantly recognisable on both sides of the border this novel won’t name. She’s a blend of principle, neurosis, and raging love, so implacably opposed to her daughter’s affair with Milkman that she can’t believe it doesn’t exist. Then again, maybe that’s not the issue.

‘‘If I really felt I had to cleave to a renouncer,’’ it’s suggested, ‘‘could I not officially have gotten myself married to him?’’ Or maybe that’s no better, the mother frets: ‘‘Look at yer woman round the corner. You could say she loved all her saturnine husbands, but where are they now? Where are most of those women’s brooding, singleminded, potently implacable husbands? Again, six feet under in the freedom fighters’ plot of the usual place.’’ He’s not just a paramilitary, but worse – a married man.

Milkman is viciously funny. Its jokes come out askew, as does its plot. We know that Milkman himself will die from the very first page, just as we know that McSomebody will assault the narrator in the ladies’ room. But one is the plot, and one is a passing thing – Burns likes the peculiarities of the latter. Eventually we reach Milkman’s shooting, and it’s barely worth a shrug. But when McSomebody gets dragged away and kicked half to death by supportive women – now that, by contrast, is a lovely surprise.