Milkman

Not sure where to begin... First, after reading some ten pages of this novel you discover the importance of the paragraph, for here they are few and far in between. So reading the whole thing (352 pages) is reading a wall of text. It's like a marathon and you never know if you'll be able to hold on until the next paragraph. Second the language is surprising. Like English at the time of Cavern man: Me husband, you wife, she older daughter, she middle daughter, them wee daughters. But allow me to quote her: "After a pause brother-in-law said he was going to beat him up all the same. ‘Not necessary,’ I said. ‘Still,’ he said. ‘Ach,’ I said. ‘Ach nothing,’ he said. ‘Ach sure,’ I said. ‘Ach sure what?’ he said. ‘Ach sure, if that’s how you feel.’ ‘Ach sure, of course that’s how I feel.’ ‘Ach, all right then.’ ‘Ach,’ he said. ‘Ach,’ I said. ‘Ach,’ he said. ‘Ach,’ I said. ‘Ach.’ " Third, reading this book is heavy not only because of the said " wall of text" and length but also because nothing very rejoicing is happening in there. Deaths, violence, more deaths. This is not to say it's never funny, as showed by the above quote. But for all that I kept on reading till the end because she does an incredible job at making you feel what it must have felt like to live during The Troubles. Very soon you realize that this language has a function, it makes every event, every thought, every word something dangerous. And you realize that as she explains you had to think in layers, top of your head ( thoughts that could and should be seen and felt by others), middle head (not so safe) and bottom ( not to be disclosed under any circumstance). One of the most original works I've read in quite a while.

I enjoyed this overall. I think it was a bit long, it tested my endurance. It was a weird experience because I was enjoying it and finding it difficult to get through it at the same time. I think it’s got a relentless feel because of many long sentences and huge paragraphs.

This book tackles the Troubles from the perspective of an 18 year old woman. It’s the context for the story rather than the main focus. It talks a lot about everyday experiences of those in the midst of it. There was a lot of unexpected humor despite the darkness of the content.

The plight of being a young woman is a major theme. A lot of the story is in the narrator’s head as she deals with and reflects back on difficult situations with men, with living in a small community.

This is an intensely internal story. There’s not a ton of action on the page. I think there’s a lot to “unpack” about the narrator and the choices she makes. Also about the author’s stylistic choices. For example, everyone in the story is referred to by a nickname. That’s a conscious choice that might annoy you as the reader, but my interpretation is that it’s symptomatic of the narrator’s desire to keep emotional distance from everyone in her life.

Favorite quotes:
He was leaning over, looking out at me, smiling and friendly by way of being obliging. But by now, by age eighteen, ‘smiling, friendly and obliging’ always had me straight on the alert.

Had I considered though, probably I’d have thought she wouldn’t catch onto it, wouldn’t understand the scorn in it, that my dismissal of her would pass right over her head. But ma did catch on, did understand, and unexpectedly she dropped that comical role, the ‘mamma anxious for wedding bells’ role – a cliché gone away, fallen away – and her real self stepped forward.

With da it was never ‘Must get down on knees and give thanks that others in the world are suffering far worse than me’. I couldn’t see how he couldn’t be right too, because everybody knew life didn’t work like that. If life worked like that then all of us – except the person agreed upon to have the most misfortune in the world – would be happy, yet most people I knew weren’t happy.

Then my head, which initially had reassured with, ‘Excellent. Well done. Successfully am I fooling them in that they do not know who I am or what I’m thinking or what I’m feeling,’ now began itself to doubt I was even there. ‘Just a minute,’ it said. ‘Where is our reaction? We were having a privately expressed reaction but now we’re not having it. Where is it?’ Thus my feelings stopped expressing. Then they stopped existing.

‘You’d better be careful then,’ said friend, which was what everybody said. People always said you’d better be careful. Though how, when things are out of your hands, when things were never really in your hands, when things are stacked against you, does a person – the little person down here on the earth – be that?