Milkman

Anna Burns 2018

Devastation Rating

Emotionally Ruined
Northern Ireland Troubles women violence

Our Take

An unnamed narrator in an unnamed city during an unnamed conflict is being claimed by a paramilitary and everyone around her accepts this as the cost of existing. Burns writes the Troubles through a voice of such sustained irony that the violence beneath it keeps breaking through. The middle sister's survival is its own kind of damage.

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