Milkman

I chose to read Milkman by Anna Burns because I still have fond feelings about our family milkman, Ralph. Ralph used to bring us milk in glass bottles with foil lids. He also brought lemonade and cottage cheese. I also chose it because it won the 2018 Man Booker prize for fiction. In this story milkman is a criminal and a stalker who stalks our narrator. The narrator is an 18 year old woman who goes around reading while walking. She wants to avoid the politics and gossips. She is under pressure from her mother to get married immediately and start having children but she doesn't want to do that. The book never says but eventually I figured out it was set in Northern Ireland during the troubled 1970's. The narrator never uses names. She is known as middle sister. She has a 1st older sister, a 2nd older sister, a 3rd older sister and three wee sisters. She calls her romantic partner "maybe boyfriend" and he calls her "maybe girlfriend." Sometimes the author gets wordy and goes off into this stream of consciousness style of writing. Eventually she comes around and gets back to the story. The effects of being stalked by milkman are all encompassing in ways I never imagined. I admired middle sister for her integrity and valor.