![]() She and others in her community are not to read newspapers from London, ride in English cars or watch English movies. ![]() ![]() ![]() Though not herself a militant “renouncer,” she governs her life by a set of unwritten laws, which she recites with comic specificity. She’s lost loved ones in street battles against British security forces. “Milkman,” which in October earned Burns the prestigious Man Booker Prize, is set in late 1970s Belfast, a time and a place “of not letting bygones be bygones.” The Troubles - a period of deadly unrest stemming from Northern Ireland’s fraught relationship with Britain - have raged for a decade, and our unnamed protagonist has fallen into a circumscribed routine.Īn 18-year-old student, she’s from a big Catholic family with ties to the Irish Republican Army (or a related splinter group). “If you didn’t,” she says, “you were left with a curtailed route owing to religious geography” and the “psycho-political atmosphere, with its rules of allegiance, of tribal identification, of what was allowed and not allowed.” Before lacing up her sneakers, she carefully charts her course, choosing safe stretches of road and avoiding no-go zones. The main character of Anna Burns’ vibrant new novel is an avid runner, but she can’t get her miles in just anywhere. ![]()
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