More than anything, I think Burns is a master at specificity. And yet the stakes are always there-not just social or physical stakes, but deeply unsettling and disorientating personal and existential ones. What stands out to me most about Milkman is how propulsive it feels, even though it’s not at all a propulsive novel. Its sentences are long, it’s not particularly plot-focused, and it goes on a lot of tangents. We see this again and again, this talk of “contraries,” of saying one thing and meaning another, or else of saying something so as to intentionally mask the presence of another. Throughout the novel, Burns focuses on “irreconcilables” in the “inner landscapes” of both her heroine and her community. That term, “irreconcilables,” is significant, because this is a novel that is so much about the everyday cognitive dissonances you live with during a time like the Troubles. There’s a feeling that yes, this particular story matters in this particular iteration, but also that this story has come in many other familiar iterations before. Milkman is a novel that feels almost mythical, bigger than itself. The generality of the characters’ names reflects this: Somebody McSomebody, third-sister, the milkman.
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