Milkman

Eine Geschichte über sprach-und namelose Menschen in einer dysfunktionalen Gesellschaft, weitschweifig mit Eloquenz und treffsicherem Humor erzählt. Stilistisch ungewöhnlich und einfach hervorragend!

"Lincoln in the Bardo", the Booker Prize winner before "Milkman" was my favorite book in a decade or so, and other really great novels have won the Prize over its 50 years - "The Remains of the Day", "The Line of Beauty", "The White Tiger", so of course I have high expectations. It is undeniable that Anna Burns wants to tell her readers something. She has created a weird world about gossip and terror and exaggerated gender roles - it is almost as if Samuel Beckett had tried to replace Margaret Atwood as the writer of "The Handmaid's Tale". However, even though she probably has a clear idea of what she wants to convey, it does not come across. The protagonist, who is said to have an affair with a character called "Milkman" also is low-key harassed by one of her brothers-in-law, has a maybe-boyfriend and an uninterested mother. And she does not give names to anyone but just nouns based on their functions. In theory, this could be right up my alley, but somehow it fails to make me want to engage with the story. So, let's reread "The Handmaid's Tale"!