Milkman

Being interesting is dangerous in this unnamed Northern Irish city in the 1970s, at the height of the Troubles. The narrator, called only middle sister, already draws suspicion because she walks around reading nineteenth-century novels. She is hiding a maybe-boyfriend from her mother when the milkman, a senior paramilitary whose name has no link to any milk round, pulls up and offers her a lift. After that he follows her everywhere, and the gossips of her district conclude that she is his lover. Squeezed between the paramilitaries, the state's forces and a community that lives on rumour, she spends months trying to slip his attention without saying a word.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Politics, Coming of age (assigned by AI)

Set in

United Kingdom, 1970s

First published

2018

Author's age

56 when first published

ISBN

9781644450000 (Graywolf Press, United States)

More

Wikidata