Irish Author Anna Burns' THE MILKMAN Wins the 2018 Man Booker for Fiction

The brilliant, witty but mostly off-putting THE MILKMAN is shrouded in obtuse ambiguity.  None of the characters are named other than dubbed with vague identities.  The location for the story is set somewhere "over the waters."  I praise the author Anna Burns (b. Belfast 1962) unique and immutable style which taunts the reader into making suppositions as to when/where the story take place.  A good bet would be during the 1970s bloody Belfast years when distrust, prejudice, fanaticism and rampant violence destroyed countless lives and divided a country into warring factions.  "There's tribalism and there's bigotry" and Burns' enigmatic prose makes it clear that there are political, religious and social proprieties that are judged and judged harshly.  The demands on one's loyalties cannot be abridged in the set "psycho-political atmosphere, with its rules of allegiance of tribal identification, of what was allowed and not allowed."  The novel is haunting and poetic; harsh and comical.  "The tea of allegiance.  The tea of betrayal.  There were 'our shops' and 'their shops."  "To come from this side of the road-our side - and to bring that flag in then, was divisive, indicative too, of a traitorous kowtowing and a betrayal most monstrous."  The first sentence sets the cantameter for this chilling, complex and oftentimes confusing work of fiction that bears comparison to Faulkner and Joyce.  Burns ambiguities imbue the novel with relevance in today's xenophobic and bigoted world.  Intolerance for those deemed heretics or outsiders is far too perilous in today's volatile climate.  THE MILKMAN may not appeal to the masses as this novel demands much of its reader.  Anna Burn may burn bridges appealing to the mass majority of readers but for those who venture to take on this odyssey, there is more to be redeemed than a Golden Fleece.