Anna Burns’ Milkman, the 2018 winner of the Man Booker prize, hooked me at
first with its language: stilted and formal, hinting at a post-apocalyptic near
future reminiscent of 1984, where
everyone checks for bugs in their phones and is not surprised to be
photographed while jogging in the park. Most characters are stripped of names and
are known only by epithets, such as “the man who didn't love anybody” or “Somebody
McSomebody” or “maybe-boyfriend.”
Middle sister, our nameless narrator, is
being approached by the milkman. But he’s not really a milkman, he’s a renouncer
of the state, and quite high up in the paramilitary pecking order. Anna Burns’
great achievement is recreating the psychological tension of the unwanted
attention that without words or violence still constitutes harassment. See the
progression in this string of quotes I highlighted from early in the book to
almost the end:
“I couldn’t be rude because he wasn’t
being rude … Why was he presuming I didn’t mind him beside me when I did mind
him beside me? ... I did not know intuition and repugnance counted, did not
know I had a right not to like, not to have to put up with, anybody and
everybody coming near … So shiny was bad, and ‘too sad’ was bad, and ‘too joyous’
was bad, which meant you had to go around not being anything … I came to
understand how much I’d been closed down, how much I’d been thwarted into a
carefully constructed nothingness by that man.”
The sad parallel that Burns draws is between
the one-on-one intimidation of a woman by a man, and the similar constant
harrying of a terrorist state (presumably Ireland in the 1970s), in which the
citizens become used to unspoken rules, constant surveillance, and an ever-present
threat of violence.
The comparison, and its conveyance through
nameless characters in absurd situations, is brilliant. Nonetheless, the plot
started to lag about halfway through, and I had to push through to the end.
Now I have read every single Man Booker
prize winner since its inception fifty years ago in 1968. My future goal is to read
the winner every year, and perhaps the shortlisted books as well. Next post: my
personal Booker favorites.
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