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Mann Booker Prize 2018

An unconventional book about an unconventional girl, living in times where life was highly conventionalized within the respective communities (working class Catholic and working class Protestant). The vision of an 18-year-old female walking for long distances through Belfast of the Troubles era, while reading classics such as Jane Eyre, is nuts. She describes the route as crossing through areas of one community or the other, including the “ten-minute zone�� �� a “no man’s land�� between the two warring communities. I wondered about a woman or even a man and a woman running long distances through the city during those times. Depending on the decade, and the neighborhoods, it might have been crazy or impossible. Absolutely surreal.

The city is never named. The opposing forces are never named. We know the girl is Catholic because, for one, her mother has a large number of children. I was so protected as a Catholic girl, when I got to university, I had no idea how other students knew I was Catholic, when they learned I was the oldest of 6 children. It took me a full year to figure it out. Labels in the novel are never straightforward and are more likely to be understood by readers who know something of the landscape of the Troubles. The renouncers is a brilliant name for republican militants. “Over the sea�� means British and “over the border�� �� the Irish Republic. While families with loads of kids are assumed to be Catholic, in other communities they could be, for example, Orthodox Jews.

About names �� Somebody Mc Somebody was my favorite name for a character. I love the terms for “what’s-her-name�� in other languages. In Spanish it’s fulana. The phrase has its own word! And we have the Milkman - and not just one as there appears to be more than one. A milkman is a person who one expects to see and welcome as the daily deliverer of milk �� a light in a dreary city. Is he sinister or ?? More important to note, that historically in Northern Ireland, your name, your address, the school you attended, where (or if) you work, tell the inquirer which community �� Protestant or Catholic �� you are part of. As Burns notes, although there were people who weren’t either, in the Belfast of that time, they were invisible, and weren’t considered.
Seamus Heaney’s poem “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing�� describes the ethos of the time.

The entire poem is here

Language play is highly valued in Irish culture. It is used to confuse outsiders, to delight, to obscure, and to control. Other reviewers have mentioned comparisons to Eimear McBride and Lisa McInerney, but I’d like to throw in other references, at the risk of giving hackneyed examples. Perhaps, because I am currently reading Samuel Beckett’s novels, that comparison occurred to me. And maybe because I’ve read Ulysses more than once, I found the girl’s wandering the city reminiscent of Leopold Bloom. It is wonderful to see a new generation of writers, particularly women, breaking away from the strictures of the past. Ireland, both the Republic and Northern Ireland, lived for decades under the constraints of both Protestant and Catholic puritanism, which at the end of the 20th century, have been broken.

Not (initially) an easy read but one well worth the effort.

Second "reading" : I listened to the audiobook. I got even more from this book the second time around. More language play than I caught the first time. I loved it even more the second time and would give it more than 5 stars.