“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,” is the opening sentence in Anna Burn’s 2018 Booker Prize winning novel, Milkman. Way to lay out the stall of the oddly specific and yet generic narration which throws the reader into the setting head first.

Burns, the first author from Northern Ireland to win the award, never uses a a name. Our narrator and protagonist is an eighteen year-old called only “middle sister” from an unnamed city in Northern Ireland stalked by a paramilitary known as the milkman. The lack of proper nouns add to a claustrophobic culture of surveillance and suspicion that is both distinct to the ‘Troubles’ in 1970s Northern Ireland and present in the tyrannical society of the island of Ireland. Middle sister is easily targeted by gossip because she reads while walking - and so while trying to avoid a misstep in any direction by ignoring her surroundings, she marks herself as outside the norm and so at fault for the creepily quiet encroachment that comes at her from all directions that as a young woman she’s expected not to mention. In a society marked by insinuation and rumor, staying quiet is both dangerous and safe. There’s no winning.

The absurdity and danger of the middle sister’s predicament in an absurd and dangerous culture where winning isn’t allowed reminded me of The Valley of the Squinting Windows, a 1918 classic about a miserable Irish village where everyone watches and waits for you to fail. If you haven’t read either, I recommend both.