Arts, Books, Literature

An obscure and impenetrable winner of the Man Booker 2018

CRITIQUE: MILKMAN

THE Man Booker has got itself into a frightful twist. In 2013, it was announced that the prize, previously open only to UK, Irish and Commonwealth writers, would widen its remit to include any authors writing in English. Senior British novelists protested, and rightly so. It wasn’t hard to foresee what would happen when the juggernaut of US creative writing was allowed to bear down on the awards. Since then, two Americans have won (Marlon James for A Brief History of Seven Killings and George Sanders for Lincoln in the Bardo) while the longlist and the shortlist are jam-packed with US novelists.

Two Americans were on this year’s shortlist – Rachel Kushner for The Mars Room, a punchily brilliant account of life inside a women’s prison, and Richard Powers for The Overstory, a densely branched eco epic that was the favourite amongst many critics. But it couldn’t win, and neither could Kushner. Even if either had been a worthy victor, that would have sent the wrong message for a prize that now has to fend off accusations of American dominance.

Because of this, the 2018 winner of the Man Booker went to Milkman by Anna Burns, the first Northern Irish writer to take the prize. Milkman is the oddest, most impenetrable choice since Keri Hulme’s The Bone People in 1985. Not only is it not the best book on the longlist where Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight cast its spectral magic and Sally Rooney’s Normal People told a love story that had critics swooning.

Set in Northern Ireland, during the Troubles, Burns’ experimental novel is narrated by an 18-year-old girl who finds herself persuaded by a sinister, much older, paramilitary figure – the Milkman of the title. Burns writes in long, stream-of-consciousness paragraphs and there are no names to help the reader navigate or by aiding their bearings. The narrator is known as “middle sister”; other characters are perversely described as “third brother-in-law” or “first brother-in-law”. Good luck to any reader trying to tell the difference. And then there is the welcome, chirpy presence of car-obsessed “maybe-boyfriend”.

Chairman of the judges-panel, Kwame Anthony Appiah, said: “None of us has ever read anything like it before.” Which is strange as you would hope those paid to assess one of the world’s biggest literary prizes would have a working knowledge of two other rather well-known Irish writers, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. Burns certainly belongs in the school of Joyce and Beckett, although not yet in their class of writing. You might say “middle sister” is Molly Bloom with bombs.

Those who consider themselves to be rather good and passionate readers will, undeniably, find Milkman hard work. Appiah acknowledged as much when he admitted the book is a challenge, “but in the way a walk-up Snowden is challenging”. You’re not likely to see that appearing on one of those staff endorsement cards in Waterstone’s bookstore (are you)? “Really quite enjoyable if you like ascending a Welsh mountain in driving rain and mist. Pack a kagoule and Kendal Mint Cake!” Pity the poor booksellers.

Appiah’s contention that Milkman “is enormously rewarding if you persist with it” sounds more like homework than great literature. You shouldn’t need to persist with a great book; you shouldn’t be able to put it down. As for his suggestion that it might be helpful to sing some of the paragraphs aloud… really? Most people, I would presume, don’t purchase a novel to do their own audio-book. The language should make its own music as Roddy Doyle did in Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, his glorious Book winner of 1993. Like Burns, Doyle was working in the headlong, harum-scarum humour of Irish vernacular, but he opened that world to outsiders, always welcoming us in with a helpless generosity. Milkman, too, has wonderful shafts of wit, as when our heroine (no name, of course) is mulling over moving in with “maybe-boyfriend”. “If we were in a proper relationship and I did live with him and was officially committed to him, first thing I would have to do is leave.” Too often, though, the scintillating observations are muffled by the engulfing blanket of words.

Burns is at her best when she is clearest. The book tells you everything you need to know about what it’s like to be “brought up in a hair-trigger society where the ground rules were – if no physically violent touch was being laid upon you, and no outright verbal insults were being levelled at you, and no taunting looks in the vicinity either then nothing was happening, so how could you be under attack from something that wasn’t there?”

Paranoia was the air they breathed in Belfast back then, when Burns herself was growing up in the Ardoyne area. In one superb scene early on, “maybe-boyfriend” is cock-a-hoop at getting hold of rare parts from a Blower Bentley, which are laid out on his living room floor. As the neighbours turn up to witness this treasure for themselves, the mood is curdled by one visitor who snarkily wonders who got another part of the classic car, “the bit with that flag on”. In a viciously tribal society, where giving your baby the wrong name could lead to a knock on the door from men in balaclavas, being in possession of a car part that didn’t have a Union flag on, but which might have had that flag “from over the water”, is enough to create an ominous atmosphere.

Even the blameless-sounding Milkman is a dark joke: the IRA delivered petrol bombs in milk-crates to doors at the corner of every street. The way the enforcer insinuates himself horribly into the young woman’s life, the way she is powerless in that ultra-masculine world, unable to tell him to go away, feels all too relevant and pertinent in the era of #MeToo.

Milkman is no Tristram Shandy, although its author shares many of Sterne’s startling gifts. One day Burns may well write a great comic novel that will find a huge and satisfying readership.

This year’s winner of the Man Booker Prize is, sadly, not it.

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Britain, First World War, History, Society

Great War Centenary: Respect the decision of our forebears

WW1 AND ITS CENTENARY

THE First World War was the primal disaster of modern times. Debate rages over whether to mark its centenary next month as a victory or as a catastrophe that should have been avoided.

The war began four decades of violence, hatred and cruelty that the peoples of 1914 could not have foreseen in their darkest nightmares. Across Europe, nine million soldiers died. In Britain, one in three men aged 19 to 22 in 1914 were killed. The cost could have paid for thousands of hospitals and schools, and a university for every city.

The argument that Britain should have kept out of the war seems, therefore, insurmountable. Most people in July 1914 assumed it would: the prime minister, HH Asquith, thought there was “no reason why we should be anything more than spectators”. The Cabinet, Parliament and public opinion agreed, and the government tried hard to defuse the crisis.

So, what changed?

Germany launched a surprise invasion of Luxembourg, France and Belgium. The social reformer, Beatrice Webb, decided that “even staunch Liberals agree that we had to stand by Belgium”. They thought Britain had to resist a direct threat to its security and uphold international law and order against “militarism”. Wrote the diarist Ada Reece: “We must fight, but all are agreed that it will be more terrible than any previous war [and] the ultimate consequences… none can foresee.”

Given that she was right about the consequences, should they still have kept out? Three arguments are produced to say yes. First, that it was not our fight. Secondly, that the war was futile. Thirdly, that without British intervention, Germany would have won quickly, and Europe would soon have acquiesced in its domination – a lesser evil than the horrors to come.

All these arguments are founded on very optimistic guesses. More pessimistic scenarios are at least as plausible. As early as September 1914, the German government decided that Belgium would become a “vassal state”, with its ports “at our military disposal” to directly threaten Britain. To ensure “security for the German Reich in West and East for all imaginable time”, Germany planned to annex large parts of northern France, impose a crippling financial indemnity, make France “economically dependent on Germany” and exclude British commerce. Neutral Holland would become “dependent”. Vast territories would be taken from Russia to “thrust [it] back as far as possible” – precisely what happened in 1917.

Had Germany won, democracy and liberal government would have faced a bleak feature. Authoritarian regimes would have been in the driving seat. French democracy might well have collapsed, as it did in 1940. What German soldiers and governors actually did is telling – more than 6,000 civilians in Belgium and France were massacred in the first weeks of the war by invading troops, occupied territories were subjected to military rule, and they subsequently suffered semi-starvation, mass forced labour and systematic economic devastation.

In short, Britain faced a prospect in 1914 not so different from that in 1939. It could have survived, even as a cowed and impoverished satellite state, and it is possible to consider that this would have been a lesser evil than the brutal carnage of the trenches. But in 1914, government and people decided otherwise. For one thing, they feared being forced into a future war without allies against a German-dominated coalition. They were probably right to fear what a victorious Germany might do, but they underestimated – like everyone else – the cost of preventing it. Nevertheless, most of them always believed it was worth the sacrifice.

We can choose to disagree with our forebears, but theirs was not a senseless decision – they had no safe option. If tomorrow the Russian army marched through Poland, and we were faced with the prospect of hostile aircraft based just across the Channel, would we react any differently? Let us hope we never face such a choice as the people of 1914 did. Their determination gave democracy and freedom a chance, even though it took a second war to complete the victory.

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Britain, Economic, Financial Markets, Government, Society

Brexit, oil prices and global trade: factors hindering economic recovery

ECONOMIC

DESPITE the uncertainties surrounding Brexit the range of expectations for UK growth for 2019 is relatively narrow – between 1 per cent and 2 per cent. A recent poll found that no economist expected an outright contraction next year; nor did any expect a boom. Rather, the most likely scenario is for growth of 1.5 per cent, which, the Bank of England believes, is around the UK’s new lower trend rate. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has also refreshed its global forecasts, expects roughly this same rate of growth in Britain to persist over the next five years.

The Brexit saga is probably the most obvious risk facing the economy. Whatever one’s view of the longer-term Brexit effect, a “no-deal” outcome could lead to the economy plunging into recession, while a “good deal” could boost confidence, investment and consumer spending and thereby economic growth. But Brexit is far from the only risk in town.

Indeed, there are plenty more global concerns that may yet scupper the recovery. After all, the British economy – unlike the United States and other relatively “closed” economies – is highly dependent on the outlook for global growth. And across much of the world forecasters see growth slowing over the coming years, even without some of the more disastrous risk scenarios crystallising.

What are the key global risks that might come back to bite the UK? First, there’s China. Many think of China as being a source of cheap imports but it is also Britain’s sixth largest goods export market. On one measure, published by the IMF, China overtook the US as the world’s largest economy in 2014, so attempts to reduce its debt pile after many years of spending could present a significant threat to global growth.

Fiscal largesse in the US is boosting growth there, but as President Trump’s splurge comes to an end the economic hangover could spread far beyond its shores. On this side of the Atlantic, the European Commission is likely to complain about the high budget deficits planned by Italy’s populist government, providing another source of market stress. Then there’s the issue of protectionism. Global tariffs have fallen significantly since the interwar period and remain low even after recent increases between the US and the EU/China. Even if these moves do not directly affect Britain, an escalation in trade disputes could yet be the precursor to weaker global confidence and exports, both to the UK’s detriment.

Oil prices could become a destabilising global force. Prices have fallen a little over the past few weeks but remain high at above $80 per barrel. Had strong global demand been the cause, that might have provided a counterbalance. But when prices rise because of supply constraints net oil importers such as the UK suffer increased costs with no improvement in demand conditions.

Higher energy prices also tend to leak into general price inflation. For now the inflation genie remains in the bottle, with rates of inflation across the G7 in a tight 1 per cent to 3 per cent range. But past above-trend rates of economic growth alongside unemployment rates at their lowest in a generation suggest upside risks to inflation. If not met with rising wages, that would reduce household spending power and could also prompt central banks to raise interest rates more quickly. Not only does that directly curtail domestic spending but for those countries that have taken out foreign currency loans (such as Turkey or Argentina) rising global interest rates push up their repayments and the risk of more widespread emerging market panic.

Recent moves in equity prices reflect all of these concerns; the FTSE 100 index fell to below 7,000 to a six-month low earlier this month. Investor concerns relate to the fact that neither central banks nor government exchequers can be sure their armoury is sufficient to deal with another crisis, should one arise. Banks may be more resilient now but they may not be the source of the next economic downturn.

Brexit is one of many global concerns that have increased the risks of another downturn in Britain and beyond. These risks will require careful navigation by policymakers if another downturn is to be avoided.

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