Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2018
Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2019In this unnamed city, to be interesting is dangerous. Middle sister, our protagonist, is busy attempting to keep her mother from discovering her maybe-boyfriend and to keep everyone in the dark about her encounter with Milkman.
But when first brother-in-law sniffs out her struggle, and rumours start to swell, middle sister becomes 'interesting'. The last thing she ever wanted to be. To be interesting is to be noticed and to be noticed is dangerous.
Milkman is a tale of gossip and hearsay, silence and deliberate deafness. It is the story of inaction with enormous consequences.
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One day Somebody McSomebody put a gun to my breast and called me a cat and threatened to shoot me was the same day the milkman died. ONE
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(@FaberBooks, 13 June 2018, 14 hours 11 minutes, audiobook, bought from @audibleuk, read by Bríd Brennan)
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This has been on my radar for ages because I've heard so many good things about it. I was fortunate enough to get it for £1.99 during a special @audibleuk promotion. I thought this book was dark and disturbing but utterly riveting. The setting of the book and time period is never actually stated but it's pretty clear from reading between the lines that it's set in Ireland during a period of the notorious 'troubles'. Most of the characters are also never given any names, just Middle Sister (the main character), Maybe Boyfriend and of course, the Milkman. The author usually a stream-of-consciousness style which usually doesn't work for me by perfectly sets the tone for this book. So what's Milkman about? Middle Sister, the main character comes of age in a community divided into two halves; full of suspicion, paranoia, misunderstandings and assumptions which are often quite funny and ridiculous but across the course of the book prove to have quite serious consequences. This is unlike anything I've read or listened to before.
