The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
First Northern Irish novelist to win Man Booker
Anna Burns breaks USA victory streak with fourth novel, Milkman
Anna Burns has become the first Northern Irish winner of the Man Booker Prize for her experimental tale of sexual coercion, Milkman.
The story of an 18-year-old girl’s encounters with sectarianism and social pressures in an unnamed province has seen Burns become the first UK-born winner since Hilary Mantel in 2012.
Welcomed as a novel that will “help people think about #MeToo”, it has also been praised for a unique first-person voice rich in the conversational language of Northern Ireland and its handling of universal problems facing women and outsiders.
Judges have said they did not consider the current prominence of Northern Ireland or the gender equality debate in their deliberations, nor was the accessibility of the book to average readers “on the Tube”.
Milkman has been hailed as a book that “will last” by the chairman of the panel of judges, philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, who said the novel was as useful for thinking about fractured societies in Lebanon and Syria as it was for the West’s current gender debate.
The chairman said he was “resigned” to the novel being linked to the #MeToo movement, but said the work was more universal.
Appiah said at
aceremony at the Guildhall in London: “It speaks to the future. I think it’s going to last.
“I think this will help people to think about #MeToo. It’s not just about something that is going on in this moment.
“This is about the way in which men and women put pressure on a young girl to do things sexually that she doesn’t want to do. It had to do with a masculine environment.
“This is particular, but it’s brilliantly universal. It’s in the context of a sectarian, divided society.”
Milkman follows a young girl, ambivalent towards the paramilitary violence around her, struggling with unwanted sexual advances and gossip.
Belfast-born Burns’ fourth novel uses a first-person voice rich in the conversational language of Northern Ireland, although the setting is never made explicit in the work. Its blocky, non-paragraphed structure adds a challenge for the reader.
Questioned on whether the work was too challenging for the average reader, Appiah defended the choice saying: “I have never thought that being readable on the Tube was an important feature of a novel.”
Crime writer Val McDermid, critic Leo Robson, writer and critic Jacqueline Rose and graphic novelist Leanne Shapton were the other judges for this year’s prize.