Milkman by Anna Burns

I read this a few months ago.

It's a fun book and it's about a serious subject. What is it like to grow up amid sectarian violence? What is it like when deathmongers are your normal old neighbours? This book goes a long way towards telling you what it's like, but it's fun and inventive too.  Middle sister, our protagonist, feels threatened by a sexual predator she calls Milkman, although he is not a milkman. That is his code name. Milkman wants Middle Sister to get into his car. He makes subtle threats. Middle Sister knows what could happen - she has lost family members in this pseudo-war. She could fall apart with the stress of the situation ...

Like the rest of the neighbourhood, Middle Sister is secretive. She is mainly secretive because she doesn't want her mother to know she has a boyfriend. So she doesn't tell you her name, or anyone's name (Maybe Boyfriend) who matters to her. She doesn't want anyone identified.

Middle sister's understanding of what went on is acute. She knows that there are 2 sides to a story.

"In our district the renouncers-of-the state were assumed the good guys, the heroes, the men of honour, the dauntless, legendary warriiors, outnumbered, risking their lives, standing up for our rights, guerrilla-fashions, against all the odds. They were viewed in this way by most if not all in the dstrict, at least initially, before the idealistic type ended up dead, with growing reservations setting in over the new type, those tending towards the gangster style of renouncer instead. Along with the sea change in personnel came the moral dilemma for the "our side of the road" non renouncer and not very politicised person. This dilemma consisted of, once again, those inner contraties, the moral ambiguities, the difficulty of entering fully into the truth. Here were the Johns and Marys of this world, trying to live civilian lives as ordinarly as the political problems here would allow them, but becoming uneasy, no longer certain of the moral correctness of the means by which our custodians of honour were fighting for the cause. This was not just becasue of the deaths and the mounting deaths, but also the injuries, the forgotten damage, all that personal and provate suffering stemming from successful renouncer operations. And as the renouncers' power and assumption of power increased, so too, did the uneasiness of the Johns and Marys increase, regardless too, that the other side - "over there" - across the road" - acress the water" - would be hard at it, doing their own versions of destruction as well. There was also that day-to-day business of dirty laundry in public, and of the distict renouncers laying down their law, their prescripts, their ordinances plus punishments for any prceived infringements of them. There were beatings, brandings, tar and featherings, diappearances, black-eyed, unlti-bruised people walkng about with missing digits who most certainly had those digits only the day before. There were too, the impromptu courts held in the district's hutments, also in other disused building and houses specially friendly to the renouncers. There were the myriad methods our renouncers had for levying funds for their cause. Above all, there was the orgnisation's paranoia, their examination, interrogation and almost always dispatch of informants and of suspected informants, but until this discomfort with the inner contraries took hold of the Johns and Marys, the renouncers had constituted iconic noble fighters in pretty much the whole of the community's eyes. To the groupies of the paramilitaries however, - and this could be certain girls and women unable to grasp with mind and emotion any concept of a moral conflict - men who were in the renouncers signalled not just wonderful specimens of unblemished toughness, sexiness and maleness, but through attaining to relationship with them, these females could push for their own social and careerist ends."

She goes about walking and reading at the same time and she didn't intend this to attract attention. I admire this and I admire the fresh approach to writing that keeps you engaged with this book.

Yay, Middle Sister!!