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    Milkman: A Novel
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    Milkman: A Novel
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    Milkman: A Novel
    Ebook415 pages8 hours

    Milkman: A Novel

    By Anna Burns

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Winner of the Man Booker Prize

    “Everything about this novel rings true. . . . Original, funny, disarmingly oblique and unique.”—The Guardian

    In an unnamed city, middle sister stands out for the wrong reasons. She reads while walking, for one. And she has been taking French night classes downtown. So when a local paramilitary known as the milkman begins pursuing her, she suddenly becomes “interesting,” the last thing she ever wanted to be. Despite middle sister’s attempts to avoid him—and to keep her mother from finding out about her maybe-boyfriend—rumors spread and the threat of violence lingers. Milkman is a story of the way inaction can have enormous repercussions, in a time when the wrong flag, wrong religion, or even a sunset can be subversive. Told with ferocious energy and sly, wicked humor, Milkman establishes Anna Burns as one of the most consequential voices of our day.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateDec 4, 2018
    ISBN9781644451007
    Unavailable
    Milkman: A Novel
    Author

    Anna Burns

    Anna Burns was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She is the author of two novels, No Bones and Little Constructions, and of the novella Mostly Hero. No Bones won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. She lives in East Sussex, England.

    Read more from Anna Burns

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    Reviews for Milkman

    3.5/5

    510 ratings48 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Everything I don't particularly like in a book: long paragraphs, long chapters, unnamed characters; little punctuation or dialogue -- however, after about the first 20 pages which I forced myself to read, I became totally engrossed in the life and ruminations of a young Irish girl set during the time of the Troubles. Know as "middle daughter" her life is determined by the events and family around her. Older brothers have been killed during bombings, older sister has married "the other side" and is thus banished never to be seen again. Oldest sister has married a man not whom she loves, but one that is acceptable. Middle sister is being pursued by a much older man who is a known paramilitary leader, but she is trying to be in love with a boy her age who loves cars. He lives alone in a house filled with car parts (his parents have left and become international ballroom dance stars). Everything in her life is determined either good or bad - there is no in between. Gossip spreads without words; everyone just "knows." This is a book that is really funny in places (her thoughts and observations on things), and really sad in others when you see how the culture has ruled the lives of these people. No one is really free to think for themselves and it's not the blame of a government or a church, or a doctrine - it just is the culture of an insular Irish society at the time. Some of the books almost reads like a dystopian novel, but other places are very realistic. I do think it was a bit too long and there was a part about the "person who poisons" people that I just didn't get. Interesting book in that it so aptly portrays life in just a society as Northern Ireland was during that time although there is very little actually about the Troubles - it is just the background of everything.
    • 2/5
      HOW DID THIS BOOK WIN AN AWARD? I wanted to like this book. I hate it when I can’t find any redeeming factor in a novel. Like many before me I just can’t understand how this won awards. The flow of the story was repetitive, and switched from past to future to present with clumsy transitions. The plot or theme of the book being about gossip and the damage it can cause would have been better served with a more organized flow. It very much seemed that Anna Burns just wrote every thought that entered her head as she thought it. Perhaps that is the appeal for many, but the lack of names and only descriptors to describe any given character made this a bear to try to follow. I found myself dozing off only to come back 10-15 minutes later to the same conversation still being had. Consider yourself warned. Book Prompt: A book by a woman and/or AOC (author of color) that won a literary award in 2018
    • 4/5
      Difficult timeline, character introduction.
    • 4/5
      Reason Read: Northern Irish Author, BookBingo, Booker Prize This book is set in the time of The Troubles in Northern Ireland and is the story of an 18 y/o girl who is being harassed by a man called the 'milkman'. The novel addresses issues of feminism and life during The Troubles (1970s). The book never gives anyone a name and the town is not named. It probably is Belfast. This was the winner of the 2018 Booker. Anna Burns was the first Northern Irish writer to receive the award. Burns grew up in Northern Ireland in the 70s. The troubles was a political, ethnic, and religious conflict between nationalists (Catholic and Irish) and loyalist (Protestant descendants of British settlers). This book was published by Greywolf publishing (a Minnesota publishing company). Liked: I enjoyed this coming of age story set in a time of fearDisliked: sometimes details seemed too vague
    • 5/5
      A brilliantly written novel! The narrator is an 18 year old young woman living in Northern Ireland in the 1980s. She is an unassuming person living amidst political/social chaos who becomes involved with characters named "Milkman", "real milkman", "Somebody McSomebody", and "maybe-boyfriend". Burns writes like Proust and Rushdie, in excruciating detail, in a brilliant internal monologue, with profound observations of the human behavior all around her. The social hypocrisy and inanity of her community lead to her being labeled as "beyond the pale", the pariah of their social structure. Why? Because she reads while walking and keeps to herself. The locals find her incomprehensible, hence threatening, and they proceed to create a dangerous, immoral mythology which puts her life in jeopardy and results in emotionally abusive oppression. If this isn't enough to entice you to read this novel, it can also be read as a metaphor for the dangers of extreme social divisiveness. Ring any bells? Absoulute tour de force in contemporary literature!
    • 5/5
      Stunning. I could not put it down. This stream of consciousness, single point of view of an 18 year old woman growing up in the Catholic section of Belfast surprises me by its lilting accessibility, its commentary on the social construct under pressure of lies, violence, gossip and tribalism. Profound in many ways.
    • 4/5
      Great reader on the audiobook, the Belfast accent is perfect for this. There were parts that I probably slogged through a bit, but there were more parts that were quite clever and insightful and funny. It is somehow quite specific to The Troubles and also a universal telling of themes that have been repeating throughout time. It wasn't a page turner for me until maybe the last third, but it was definitely an interesting read.
    • 3/5
      At first, I thought that this was a dystopian novel, but no. Set in Ulster during the troubles from the perspective of an 18-year-old girl. I can't say I enjoyed it but it did paint a compelling portrait of a city district under paramilitary control and the lives of all within.
      The lack of real names is a bit jarring at first, but after a while, it seemed normal. The long paragraphs and other less conventional writing styles also create a sense of discomfort in the reader too.
    • 5/5
      This book is not for everybody, but it was definitely for me. It's an unflinching and frank examination of stalking and harassing women and their effects, coupled with deep political unrest. It's darkly funny and bold, and I am going to be thinking about this book for a very long time. This might be the best Booker winner I've read in several years.
    • 4/5
      I saw this described as "stream of consciousness" and was a little concerned because on my recent trudge through [Ulysses] I lost my way many times. Not a problem with [Milkman]. The narrator's consciousness flows in an orderly stream, one thread at a time.The book is set in the seventies, in a city in Northern Ireland dominated by sectarian violence. The narrator, the eighteen-year-old middle sister, belongs to a big family linked to the "renouncers." Two renouncer brothers are dead and a third is in hiding. People of the "other religion" are loyal to the "country over the water." In middle sister's community, even the people who decry the violence are loyal to the cause, not that they have a choice. They are assaulted and killed by British soldiers and the police, and are governed, in effect, by the balaclava-wearing, military arm of the renouncers.Middle sister ignores the politics and the violence. She walks the streets with eyes on a book from the nineteenth century or earlier because she wants nothing to do with the twentieth century. She tries to reveal nothing of herself to the people around her, so when she is stalked and threatened by a middle-aged paramilitary, Milkman, she knows noone who could help her. Worse than that, local rumour has her already the mistress of the married Milkman.I enjoyed [Milkman] for its depiction of a beleaguered Catholic community during the Troubles - the loyalties, the prejudices, the rules, the gossip, the hopelessness, the insularity, the warmth, the wit. I also liked the narrator's voice, a sardonic and funny young person experimenting with language, analysing the motives of the people around her, trying to manage the senselessness of the Troubles.
    • 4/5
      It's a challenging book. The stream of conscious takes off on tangents where you don't know when it will get back to the first part of the story. I was one for whom the non-specificity of the names and locations was perfectly fine. Indeed I thought that part tapped into the universality of the story. You knew it was the troubles in Ireland, but these type of situations happen all over the world. Her understanding of her situation grows as she realizes she has been trapped by the social forces and the conformity strictly enforced in the area. Too many ways to die, and too many people sacrificed in vain. The only thing the book needed was a bit of editing. This essentially dark tale was livened up with little bits of humor here and there. Definitely not for people who are interested in a straightforward narrative.
    • 4/5
      I can't add much to what already has been said in other reviews on this site. My own reading experience was special, as I was initially unaware of the narrative's specific Northern Irish background. Burns also deliberately keeps everything vague: we never hear the name of the female narrator, we are not told any place names, and even all characters are referred to by nicknames such as "nuclear boy", "poison girl" and also "Milkman" himself. That is why I initially thought this was a dystopian story, along the lines of Kafka, Orwell and Atwood. It was only gradually that I realized that this novel actually referred to the period of the 'troubles' in Northern Ireland in the 1970s.Burns paints an oppressive picture of a polarized society with a hostile state authority (“from over the water”), paramilitary resistance groups that constantly carry out attacks and liquidations, secret renouncers and mafia-like characters, and above all an unspoken but very clear social code of honour. She also has put in a strong gender accent, because the narrator clearly outlines how much women are kept in a straitjacket in this society controlled by paranoid men.The power of this novel is the very own voice of the 18-year-old storyteller who knows that - in order to survive - she absolutely has to stay under the radar, not stand out, but at the same time she is unaware that she’s doing just the opposite, namely by reading 19th century novels while walking on the street. It's a hilarious reference by Burns to the perverse power of literature in a dystopian society. By the way, humour and hilariousness are omnipresent in this book with numerous absurd scenes and dialogues that punctuate the extreme suspense that reign in this society. The language register of almost all characters also illustrates that: their tone is colloquial and folksy with a lot of slang, but almost constantly very expensive words are used and complex reasoning is set up. Also the performance of the narrator's younger sisters is such an ironic element, with their endearing affection, while at the same time they are reading books on, for example, quantum physics and Shakespeare's true identity.On the other hand, there is the almost tangible threat posed by figures such as Milkman and SomebodyMcSomebody (another vague name) who both show an interest in our narrator (an interest that will radically change her social status in society). Through the verbal register of these characters, Burns manages to poignantly uncover the perverse side of power mechanisms, a real tour de force.In short, this definitely is a brilliant novel, no doubt about it. Only, Burns does require quite a bit from the reader. I noticed that my reading speed was only a quarter of the normal, because the very complicated constructions and the constantly covered and explicit allusions put your vigilance on the test to the extreme. I do think that in the end this novel is a bit too elongated; with a shorter edition Burns could certainly have achieved the same effect. And the final chapter, after a few dramatic events, did disappoint me a bit. Burns seems to want to show too explicitly ways out of such a hopeless social situation (the power of sincere love, for example), which gives the end a slightly moralistic undertone. But don't worry, for once this book is a justified prize winner!
    • 5/5
      Its impossible to praise this book too highly. Its one of the most compelling books I have read in years. Yes, it does require some commitment from the reader; its not the sort of novel you can grab a few pages of at bedtime. You need to read this in decent size chunks or you won't get into the rhythm of the narrator, which is almost not quite, stream of consciousness. A lot of reviews say that this is about Northern Ireland in the late 20th century, during the "Troubles". It could be - but it very much doesn't matter. By refusing to give any character a name - the narrator is "Middle Sister", she goes running with "Third Brother-in-Law", she is harassed by hopeful suitor Someone McSomebody - the author refuses to place her characters in any particular community, with any particular politics or religion, which you the reader might or might not sympathize with. Because that's not the pointThe point is that the narrator, her family, her friends and their lives are severely constrained. They live in a community which is to all intents, under totalitarian control. Movement is constrained, the people you associate with heavily monitored, every action you take is studied for non-conformism, every act symbolic. Even the naming of children is subject to critical inspectionBut Middle Sister has found ways of existing. She reads 19th century literature (nothing modern!) whilst walking. She takes French classes at nightschool in a neutral part of town. She goes for long runs. She pursues a maybe-relationship with maybe-boyfriend. Above all, she seeks to avoid attention. Sadly, she hasn't. Reading whilst walking is exactly the sort of non-conformist behaviour that will get you marked for attention. She finds she has attracted the attention of Milkman, rumoured locally to be powerful and dangerous, who she starts to encounter with increasing frequency. It is not clear exactly what Milkman wants, but local gossips assume they are having an affair. The other local "paramilitary groupies" certainly think she has become one of their number. Middle Sister finds that what little independence she has is gradually being whittled away and she is being pulled into Milkman's orbitDespite this repressive, closed in atmosphere, there is a lot of humour here. Hopeful suitor Someone McSomebody gets a well deserved come-uppance in the ladies bathroom of the local club. Maybe-boyfriend's best friend Chef (he's not a chef) gets through the day by constantly dreaming of recipes and cooking techniques. Young girls become obsessed with ballroom dancing and the streets at night are full of young girls tripping over in their older sisters' high heels. But there is sadness too; people die, people flee, people suffer the loss of large parts of their families. And an overwhelming sense of hopelessness.Anna Burns has created a unique voice here, and a unique point-of-view. Its a stunning work
    • 3/5
      I don't know what to say. A very interesting story and interesting albeit wordy narration, but at the same time heavy and complicated. Bizarre chracters and milieu. Definitely something i did not expect. That's all I can say for now.
    • 4/5
      Although names are not given to places or protagonists, Milkman is understandable as a novel set in Northern Ireland during 'The Troubles'. The style is dense and requires concentration - not a relaxing read. The narrator struggles to find ways of coping with what to an observer seems a mad world where it is less troubling to the population at large to carry Semtex around than to be seen reading a book while walking along. Rumour becomes more powerful than fact and the main character struggles to avoid becoming the victim of a predatory older man, to the extent that it seems to be affecting her mental health. Although the idea of living in such an environment is both depressing and horrifying, there is much humour in the novel, and while reading it you veer between being appalled by the situation and amused and impressed by the ways in which people contrive to live positively in such a society.
    • 5/5
      Brilliant! Love the dark humour.
    • 1/5
      horrible. I couldn't finish the book and read only sixty pages before i gave up,this s too bad, because this is supposedly a mystery and i truly loveem, and second, my mother is from Ireland and she talked like the heroine..
    • 1/5
      I was very glad to see this book end.It's dense, first-person, and rather stream-of-consciousness. One paragraph will frequently span a page. And the subject matter is tough - life in a Northern Ireland city under the IRA, or "renouncers" as they are strictly called here. As tough as the renouncers themselves are, the entire community serves as a kind of character itself, enforcing rules and behaviors on what seems every aspect of people's existence. It was absolutely vicariously stultifying to read. While nobody is allowed to give their baby the wrong name, or be seen with the wrong person or live in the wrong district, the town seems perfectly willing to tolerate lunatics and murderers in their midst - not only the renouncers, but garden-variety nutjobs, too. An extremely obtrusive gimmick of the story is that absolutely nobody is named by name. Everyone is referred to by shorthand nicknames, relationships, and birth order. This intensifies the feeling of the unimportance of the individual in the midst of a community where conformity is all-consuming.There is plot, and there is character, so as a novel it was not as much of a slog as some modernist tomes. And there is catharsis - but what was perhaps most annoying, towards the end as the plot is winding down, you finally want to start breathing freely like the narrator; and suddenly, we zip back in time a couple of weeks with a pretty silly subplot. That just put me over the edge of dislike; I haven't been so happy to finally reach the end of a book in some time.And silly subplots there are, but it was usually hard to laugh at the humor, couched as it was in the middle of difficult subject matter, and a narrator having a nervous breakdown most of the time.
    • 2/5
      I genuinely have no idea what the Booker prize judges look for in a novel. If this is anything to go by, it’s a haphazard hotchpotch that can never quite decide what it wants to be.

      Clever initially in its idea, the book starts as an almost dystopian future, though we are actually looking to the past. But does it want to be dystopian, or does it want to be a commentary on living in 1970s Belfast? Or is it a commentary on the effect of stalking - a book for the #MeToo generation. It really can’t decide, and because of this, it disintegrates into a overly long, dull read.

      Added to this I’d the most annoying narrator I have come across in a long while. We are introduced to one set of people or a situation -eating third brother-in-law for a run, for example, and then suddenly thrown into another situation without warning, to return numerous pages later to the original situation, by which time we’d forgotten about it. Not to mention the long stretches of irrelevant commentary - wrong spouses, tablets girls’s sister - I came close several times to abandoning this book out of sheer boredom.

      This book was badly in need of a good editor.
    • 4/5
      Walking while reading a girl, Middle sister, is pursued by the Milkman. This original sometimes mesmerizing narrative made be successively fascinated and bored with the dizzying rapidity of thoughts that connected - somehow, sometimes.
    • 5/5
      If Derry Girls was a stream-of-consciousness novel it might be Milkman.Frightening, funny and so close to those Troubled times, this is a novel of female experience and of ways to cope in the face of a culture and society oppressed by its history and the status quo.
    • 5/5
      A masterpiece of writing.
    • 3/5
      I started this novel in print, and found it to be tough going. Several weeks later I tried again as an audiobook, and found this to be the way to go. The reader is fantastic, and brings to life the inner dialogue of our unnamed narrator in a way I wasn't able to achieve with the print version. Even so, this is a challenging read - so bleak as to almost feel dystopian, but set in a very real, not-so-distant past. I found the reading of this to be much like the reading of Virginia Woolfe - if I can find the rhythm, the novel will flow. I'm not surprised this is a divisive novel - I can't say I enjoyed it, but I do find myself still thinking about it several weeks after I've finished.
    • 5/5
      The first thing you’ll notice as you begin reading this novel is its distinctive voice. Told in a close first person, the cadences of the sentences at once have a fluidity that is irrepressible but also arresting. At times sentences seem awkward but on rereading they make perfect sense, in tune with the rhythm of the language and their involuted clausal structure. And the diction is sporadically extreme with rare usage and coinage that nevertheless feels entirely natural. It is remarkable on the first page and, sustained throughout over 300 pages, it is an astounding achievement.The story this writing style presents is as infolding and obsessive as its sentences. In brief, an unwanted sexual aggression in an unnamed zone of internecine strife has consequences near and far. But it is so much more. Although we rarely have characters named, most of them are so vivid that you won’t easily forget them. The exception being the shadowy aggressor, Milkman, who remains obscure, menacing both metaphorically and actually.There are numerous side stories, grim or delightful in turn. And special characters like Chef, and the real milkman, and third brother-in-law, and the women with issues. I found the book both hard to put down and hard to pick up, because I wanted to savour episodes or reflect on the writing.Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      It’s not often that a book comes along that offers the reader an experience unlike any he has previously encountered. Milkman is radical, innovative, immersive, not to mention challenging and, at times, brutally disorienting. The novel’s setting is an unnamed country at a time of civil unrest, which it makes sense for us to assume is Northern Ireland in the 1970s, at the height of the Troubles, with communities divided along religious and political lines and where people live under a constant threat of violence perpetrated by two warring factions: the renouncers of the state and the state police. 18-year-old middle sister is the narrator. Middle sister comes from a family that, like most of the families she knows, has been adversely affected by the ongoing conflict: her brother and brother-in-law have met violent ends. Her father is also dead. What middle sister wants more than anything is to fly under the radar, live by her own rules, distance herself from the conflict and not call undue attention to herself. Unfortunately, she has grown into a beautiful young woman who, in her striving for anonymity, has developed habits and practices that, unbeknownst to her, have attracted precisely the kind of attention throughout the community that she hoped to avoid and made her the subject of rampant rumourmongering. Several things mark her as unusual: she runs for exercise, she reads books while walking, and she’s taking a night class in French. Specifically, middle sister has become an object of interest to the milkman, a high-ranking renouncer of the state, by all accounts a very dangerous man, who begins turning up when she least expects it, and who knows everything about her. Initially she is confused and frightened by his approach, unsure what he wants from her, uncertain how to behave toward him. When he talks to her, it is in a disarmingly circular manner, using language that demonstrates his thorough knowledge of her activities and relationships but is never overtly threatening or suggestive. And yet, these one-sided conversations (she never says anything) are filled with menace and innuendo, implying that a bond already exists between them and prodding her to change her conduct to suit community expectations. The action of the novel takes us through several anxious months in middle sister’s life, during which she struggles to make sense of what is happening while also making a series of startling discoveries about herself, her family, her “maybe-boyfriend,” and the meddling, hurtful, treacherous world in which she resides, where everyone is constantly being judged, where allegiances are assumed, and where to not act is in itself an act of defiance. The novel is narrated in a breathless rush. The prose is dense, the chapters are long, the paragraphs run on for pages. The language is sometimes repetitive. With few exceptions, characters are referred to by designations derived from some status or activity (“tablet girl’s sister,” “longest friend”) rather than names. There is conversation, but little in the way of dialogue. At times middle sister’s blasé observations about herself, her family, and others that make up her circle, are very funny. Milkman is a dazzlingly original work of fiction: a moving indictment of sectarian violence filled with moments of absurd energy and blistering honesty. It is also a book that demands that the reader give himself/herself to it completely, without reservation, because it must be read as it is written: breathlessly, in a rush. Without a doubt, middle sister is one of the more fascinating fictional characters you will encounter—we are invited deep into her consciousness where her heart, mind and soul are laid bare—and Anna Burns draws the brutal and tragic world in which she lives in minutely horrifying detail.
    • 2/5
      I tried... I really did. I started and stopped 3 times giving this book another chance. I even tried an audiobook. No... I can't do it. The endless lists of adjectives, the use of descriptors instead of names, the endless 'which is' and the unbearable writing style ... It's just too much. There is a story there somewhere ... deep inside, it is just too much work to find it.
    • 5/5
      This award-winning novel, is centered around the Irish, “Troubles” which rocked the Emerald Isle in the 1970s. Reading it, felt like hiking up to a mountain meadow. There are strenuous stretches, that can leave you invigorated, but winded, and then there are moments when you stop and marvel at the beauty that surrounds you. The fast-paced narrative, has an almost stream of conscious feel to it, some of it repetitious, but much of it is, sharply observed and darkly humorous. Obviously, this will not be for everyone, but if you lock in, you are in for a treat. I also, highly recommend you read the excellent nonfiction title, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, a history about the “Troubles”, before tackling this. It also worked very well, on audio
    • 2/5
      In this book, the narrator and most persons in the book lack names, at least in the traditional sense. Instead they are referred to by relationship or occupation. One even sports the moniker McSomebody. The mother is "Ma." One person is named Peggy. Chapters seem endless. (One runs nearly 100 pages; several chime in at the 50-page range.) 1970s Northern Ireland provides a violent setting for the troubled eighteen-year-old narrator. I forced myself to finish this one, but at least I can say I read it.
    • 4/5
      Hard read, but different and interesting
    • 5/5
      Strange: perhaps this book reviews me, rather than vice versa. Let’s deal with genre first. The answer is probably “yes.” It has a genre. I’m not sure it doesn’t have its own, unique genre. I’ll settle for stream of consciousness interior monologue political history. But I’ll be wrong.Milkman reviews me because: middle class comfortable unthreatened global north white male. I sit in my armchair and I struggle with a book that at first seems a bit tedious, and I think oh my goddess it’s another smartfart Booker Prize winning tome that is incomprehensible to mere mortals. Very clever, Ms. Burns, I’m sure, but can I be bothered?But, you know, stubborn, and anyway summer holidays and not much to do and all that, and I read a bit more. Why am I inside this narrator’s strange mind? Why can’t she name her characters without ridiculous relational pseudonyms? A voice whispers “Troubles” but what would a voice know? On the other hand, the narrator – and perhaps Burns – does provide a clue: “people were quick to point fingers, to judge, to add on even in peaceful times, so it would be hard to fathom fingers not getting pointed and words not being added, also being judged in these turbulent times, resulting too in not having your feelings hurt upon discovering others were talking about you, as in having individuals in balaclavas and Halloween masks, guns at the ready, turning up in the middle of the night at your door” (28).Yeah, whatever. Pour me another gin and adjust the sunshade and I suppose I’ll read on because: summer holidays and ennui and nothing better to do.Sometimes “aha” comes so slowly. I stumble on. Not exactly “can’t put down” but “maybe it’ll get better.” And it doesn’t. But slowly I do. Because slowly I become absorbed in a journey through a damaged mind, a mind surrounded by un-certainty and un-safety and of course no one has names because names kill. And slowly Ms. Narrator (and her friend Ms. Burns) grab me and shake me and whittle away my creature comforts until I too am absorbed in a world where trust cannot exist (I am reminded of the vastly different but same-same world of 1984 where trust perhaps kills).And I stumble on to the end of the book and like the bored sexual partner in Eliot’s Wasteland I mutter “thank God that’s over” except that three months later my life has been changed, my perspectives altered irreversibly, the novel still in my mind, and I know that I have been impacted immeasurably by a piece of writing that I cannot review but only confess to having been reviewed, judged, and altered by.