Milkman

"[Milkman] seeth[es] with black humor and adolescent anger at the adult world and its brutal absurdities. . . . For a novel about life under multifarious forms of totalitarian control--political, gendered, sectarian, communal--Milkman can be charmingly wry."--The New Yorker

"Brutally intelligent. . . . At its core, Milkman is [a] wildly good and true novel of how living in fear limits people."--NPR.org

"Milkman vibrates with the anxieties of our own era, from terrorism to sexual harassment to the blinding divisions that make reconciliation feel impossible. . . . It's as though the intense pressure of this place has compressed the elements of comedy and horror to produce some new alloy."--The Washington Post

"Milkman is a strange animal; it asks a lot, but gives something back, too: the electric jolt of a voice that feels utterly, sensationally new."--Entertainment Weekly (Grade: A-)

"[Burns'] style powerfully evokes the narrator's sense of emotional entrapment. . . . Milkman makes a passionate claim for freethinking in a place where monochromatic, us-versus-them ideology prevails."--USA Today

"Milkman is a deft and triumphant work of considerable intelligence and importance. . . . It is a deeply feminist work, a compelling and significant look at how the regular life of a young woman is intimately used for personal and political gain. . . . Middle Sister is a force. She is a modern heroine."--Los Angeles Times

"Few works of fiction see as clearly as this one how violence deforms social networks, enhancing, people's worst instincts. . . . This book is also bursting with energy, with tiny apertures of kindness, and a youthful kind of joy. . . . To plunge headlong into this voice now feels like a necessary reminder that one of the most complex and difficult emotions to put in a novel of darkness is joy. On that, too, perhaps especially so, Milkman is a triumph of resistance."--The Boston Globe

"Milkman is a richly complex portrayal of a besieged community and its traumatized citizens, of lives lived within many concentric circles of oppression. . . . Among Burns' singular strengths as a writer is her ability to address the topics of trauma and tyranny with a playfulness that somehow never diminishes the sense of her absolute seriousness. . . . There is a pulsating menace at the heart of the book, of which the title character is an uncannily indeterminate avatar, but also a deep sadness at the human cost of conflict. . . . For all the darkness of the world it illuminates, Milkman is as strange and variegated and brilliant as a northern sunset. You just have to turn your face toward it, and give it your full attention."--Slate

"This is a powerful, funny and sometimes immensely beautiful novel, with a female lead whose life is a low-key renunciation of the violence that shook her city for a generation."--Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

"At once intimate and universal, historical and fabulistic and timely, unconventional and almost sentimentally hopeful."--Vulture

"Milkman is an explosive novel, very much of history but not limited by the names, dates, and places of the official record. It's a more intimate work than that, and an outstanding contribution to the growing canon of nameless girl heroes."--The New Republic

"This coming-of-age tale is original, timely, and ultimately rewarding."--PopMatters

"Milkman vibrates. It is energized with a perspective that immerses the reader in a setting that commands attention."--Washington Independent Review of Books

"[Milkman] has unmistakable force and charisma."--WBUR "The ARTery"

"Timely and provocative; not to miss."--Orange County Register

"Imaginative, feminist, and genre-defying. . . . Burns has conjured an extraordinary world."--The National Book Review

"With an immense rush of dazzling language, Burns submerges readers beneath the tensions of life in a police state. . . . A deeply stirring, unforgettable novel that feels like a once-in-a-generation event."--Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Acute, chilling, and often wry. . . . The narrator of this claustrophobic yet strangely buoyant tale undergoes an unsentimental education in sexual politics. This is an unforgettable novel."--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Milkman is a uniquely meandering and mesmerizing, wonderful and enigmatic work about borders and barriers, both physical and spiritual, and the cost of survival."--Booklist, starred review

"Using stream of consciousness and few if any personal names, Burns creates a musical and lyrical tour de force."--Library Journal, starred review

"Eccentric and oddly beguiling. . . . What makes it memorable is the funny, alienated, common-sensical voice of middle sister, who refuses to join in the madness."--The Sunday Times (UK)

"Milkman is delivered in a breathless, hectic, glorious torrent. . . . It's an astute, exquisite account of Northern Ireland's social landscape. . . . A potent and urgent book, with more than a hint of barely contained fury."--Irish Independent

"I haven't stopped talking about Anna Burns's astonishing Milkman. The voice is dazzling, funny, acute. . . . Like all great writing it invents its own context, becomes its own universe."--Eoin McNamee, The Irish Times

"From the opening page her words pull us into the daily violence of her world--threats of murder, people killed by state hit squads--while responding to the everyday realities of her life as a young woman."--Kwame Anthony Appiah, chair of Man Booker Prize judging panel