It is an event that provides the men with a contest of 'loyaler than thou.' As it so happens, the 'maybe boyfriend' is into cars and engines and likes to bring bits of machinery into the house to boast to friends and neighbors as to how he procured such rare items in raffles. It is on one of her visits to 'maybe boyfriend's' (as she names him indeed, as she names everyone according to how they are connected to her or the community) house that a very strange, a very 'divided country' thing happens that tests the loyalties of the men who are gathered there.

This we know because as the unnamed narrator- no character is named in this novel until the very end, and even then, only a couple of them- describes from the very beginning a society in which people's every step is watched either by the community or the police, and they speak in riddles and euphemisms because who knows who is listening - yes, pretty Orwellian. The buzz around 'Milkman' coincided with discussions of the return to a hard border in Ireland and the Netflix series 'Derry Girls.' Yes, the story is set Northern Ireland. I first got to hear about Milkman' on Twitter where people were defending it as not being 'all that difficult as people make it out to be.' A fan of trying to crack literary nuts, this was high recommendation for me so I read the book in the winter break and loved it, and was not at all surprised at by the George Orwell Political Fiction Award win. 'Milkman' plunges you into the world of the narrator right from the start: 'The day Somebody McSomebody put a gun to my breast and called me a cat and threatened to shoot me was the same day the Milkman died.' It is as if you've been randomly sat next to a person you don't know in the pub, and she starts telling you a story about people you do not know, in an accent you can't quite understand, but in such an engaging manner that you ought to at least try because, whether you like it or not, these people and events matter very much and you'd be a fool not to take her seriously.

Burns milkman