To apply this word to Milkman is to belie the wonderful democratic spirit behind Burns’ stylistic game. Whether used with good intent or ill, the word puts many potential readers off, depriving them of a remarkably refreshing and addictive reading experience. To dub Milkman’s antic style experimental, as so many did upon its publication and – especially – after its Man Booker Prize nomination and subsequent win, is thus about the most unhelpful way conceivable of welcoming it into the world. The word ‘experimental’, however, is pure kryptonite in the book trade, being a byword for ‘difficult’, ‘inaccessible’, ‘grist to the academic mill’. A novel that begins with the words, ‘The 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’, can hardly be said to scream ‘business as usual’. That Milkman throws stylistic and narrative convention to the winds is beyond question. Point two requires a little more elucidation. Point one may be briskly disposed of with the banality that there is no accounting for taste. The first is to dislike it, the second is to praise it loudly for its bold experimentalism. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Īnna Burns’ Milkman Daragh Downes There are, to misquote Oscar Wilde, two ways of dislikingAnna Burns’novel Milkman (2018).
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