Milkman

Milkman is a 41-year-old man who begins stalking middle sister, often approaching her in a “small, white, nondescript, shapeshifting” van (3). As far as middle sister is aware, he isn’t actually a milkman, so she assumes that “milkman” is a code name. In actuality, the name turns out to be the man’s real surname, but it is true that he’s a high-ranking member of the local paramilitary. This proves key to his ability to harass and intimidate middle sister. In a society already disinclined to take a woman’s word over a man’s, milkman’s social prominence makes him all but immune to criticism, despite the fact that his sexual predations are an open secret in the community. Furthermore, he is able to use the particular powers his position affords him to pursue his personal agenda under the guise of a political one, as when he threatens to have maybe-boyfriend killed as a supposed collaborator.

In all these ways, milkman embodies the power structures that work together to silence and victimize women. Milkman is not particularly intimidating in and of himself—middle sister notes that she could easily outrun him, and describes him as “not flashy” in appearance or behavior (2)—but he is able to leverage his age, gender, and social status in such a way that middle sister ultimately comes to feel she has no choice but to give in to his advances. The peculiarities of life during the Troubles also work to his advantage; overt violence is so common that behaviors like stalking simply fail to register as threatening. Ultimately, it’s only milkman’s fortuitous assassination that saves middle sister, and even then, his presence continues to loom over her in the shape of (among other things) McSomebody’s jealous rage: “He was holding a handgun and it was stuck in my breast so then I knew—for already I had suspected—that the death of Milkman wouldn’t mean, for me, the end of Milkman” (306). 

Maybe-boyfriend is the 20-year-old car mechanic whom middle sister has been dating for roughly a year at the start of the novel. His parents are a pair of internationally famous ballroom dancers who gave their house to their sons when they left to pursue their careers; since maybe-boyfriend’s older brothers have since moved out, he is one of the few young men in the district who actually owns a home. To middle sister’s dismay, he fills this house up with car parts that he tinkers with in his spare time. In addition to cars, maybe-boyfriend also has an interest in cooking that worries middle sister, who sees this and other habits as evidence that maybe-boyfriend might be in some way insufficiently masculine: “I began to wonder, again, if maybe-boyfriend should be going to sunsets, if he should be owning coffee pots, if he should like football whilst giving the impression of not liking football” (75). Nevertheless, middle sister does care for maybe-boyfriend a great deal, in part because she sees him as endearingly disingenuous: “Curious and engaged and eager—because of passion, because of plans, because of hope, because of me. [...] [H]e was uncalculated, transparent, free from deception, always was what he was” (18). 

The relationship between middle sister and maybe-boyfriend is fairly serious—maybe-boyfriend is the only man middle sister has slept with, and the two periodically discuss moving in with one another—but its parameters are also ambiguous; every time the couple considers making their relationship official and exclusive, one or both of them gets cold feet, and they mutually agree to “go back to the maybe territory of not knowing whether or not [they] were dating” (9). Their relationship deteriorates over the course of the novel, in large part due to milkman’s threats to kill maybe-boyfriend. As it turns out, however, maybe-boyfriend has actually been seeing someone else throughout his relationship with middle sister: his best friend, chef. His involvement with middle sister effectively ends when she chances to overhear him telling chef he ought to have been with him all along, and then planning to run away with him to Cuba or South America.

Ma is middle sister’s 50-year-old, widowed mother. In some ways, she seems more a stereotype of an Irish mother than a fully developed character; she is highly traditional in her social and religious views, prone to gossiping with the neighborhood women, and quick to criticize her children and interfere in their lives. She is particularly eager to see middle sister safely married to a reliable young man, and thus responds with alarm to the rumors that her daughter is having an affair with a middle-aged, married paramilitary.

Milkman, however, is recounted in the first person, which means that its depiction of ma is inseparable from middle sister’s perceptions of her mother. This is significant because middle sister herself admits she “considered [her mother] a stereotype, a caricature, something, of course, [she] would never become [her]self” (52). Even then, middle sister is intermittently aware that there is more to ma than meets the eye, and that her meddlesome behavior ultimately stems from a place of love and concern. Middle sister also suspects that some of ma’s piety and traditionalism may be an affectation; for instance, when ma describes marriage as “a divine decree, a communal duty, a responsibility [...] acting your age, having right-religion babies and obligations and limitations and restrictions and hindrances,” middle sister remarks, “often as I grew older I’d wonder if this really was—in the undergrowth of her own recesses—truly what ma believed” (50). These suspicions prove correct. After real milkman is shot, ma admits to harboring lifelong feelings for him, and as he recovers, she changes dramatically: “[A] side benefit to real milkman getting shot but crucially not dying, was that ma was dropping years off her, though in correlation to this it seemed she was losing a lot of confidence, becoming adolescent” (327). Although middle sister at times finds her mother’s new insecurity frustrating, seeing her mother in this vulnerable state makes her more sensitive to her feelings and complexities as a person, and the pair’s relationship ends on stronger footing than it began.

Third-brother-in-law is the husband of third sister and a friend of middle sister’s, who shares her interest in running. He is 19 and “a mad exerciser, a mad street fighter, a basic all-around mad person [...] [who] never gossiped, never came out with lewd remarks or sexual sneers or sneers about anything” (11). His reverential attitude towards women puzzles those around him:

[H]e expected women to be doughty, inspirational, even mythical, supernatural figures. [...] If a woman wasn’t being mythical and so on, he’d try to nudge things in that direction by himself becoming slightly dictatorial towards her (12).

When going on runs with middle sister, for instance, he attempts to nudge her into deciding the day’s mileage; the first time she doesn’t, just after milkman’s stalking begins, he immediately becomes concerned. This speaks to third brother-in-law’s sensitivity and perceptiveness; contrary to what middle sister initially assumes, for example, third-brother-in-law is actually well versed in political matters but simply doesn’t obsess over them. This apparent disinterest, combined with his “avowals of devotion towards women, his mission of idolatry” (60) would ordinarily be enough to mark him as one of the district’s beyond-the-pales, but he is so likeable that his supposed eccentricities are tolerated. 

Somebody McSomebody is the third eldest son in an “entrenched renouncer family” (129). His father, oldest sister, and oldest brother have all died as a result of their involvement with the paramilitaries, and his second oldest brother—though not a renouncer himself—dies in a bomb explosion. His two younger brothers also die prematurely: one (nuclear boy) by suicide and the youngest by falling out a window.

Somebody McSomebody is the same age as middle sister, and once asked her out. When she rejected him, he began threatening and stalking her, and he renews his pursuit after hearing about her supposed relationship with milkman, this time pretending to be a paramilitary himself. He ultimately goes so far as to attack her in a women’s bathroom, but a crowd of women intervenes, beating McSomebody up in turn. This speaks to the fact that while McSomebody may be “menacing, deluded, obsessive, [and] deranged” (134), he lacks the social power to pose the degree of danger that milkman does; he can threaten or hurt middle sister in certain ways, but he doesn’t have the clout to violate community norms outright (for instance, by stepping inside a woman’s bathroom to conduct his assualt).

Wee sisters are middle sister’s seven, eight, and nine-year-old younger siblings. They are precocious, intelligent, and curious, and spend much of their time studying and discussing various complex and involved topics amongst themselves: listing topics that might interest wee sisters, middle sister mentions “the intestinal tract, unusual euphemisms, double-entry bookkeeping, the three divisions of the psyche, the Hebrew alphabet, Russian Nihilism, Asian cattle, [and] twelfth-century Chinese porcelain” (212). In all other respects, however, wee sisters are average children: They play dress up, enjoy being read to by middle sister, and respond with confusion when their older sisters try to warn them about first-brother-in-law’s predatory behavior. Wee sisters’ enthusiasm and naiveté leads some to worry that they could also wind up in political trouble; middle sister, for instance, responds with horror when she discovers them reading newspapers from “over there” in an attempt to “understand their viewpoint” (150). It’s wee sisters’ very openness, however, that makes them a bright spot in a novel where most people are too frightened to challenge the status quo. They last appear waltzing in the streets with the rest of the city’s little girls, all of whom—Catholic and Protestant alike—are united in their admiration of the international ballroom dancing couple.

Chef is the best friend of maybe-boyfriend; the two are also in a secret romantic relationship with one another. Chef is anxious and emotional, and though he isn’t actually a chef, his interest in cooking (and particularly in baking) has made him a longstanding target of homophobic attacks. This is how he and maybe-boyfriend came to be friends; the latter intervened during a schoolyard fight and has continued to look out for chef ever since. Chef also has an eccentric habit of talking aloud to himself as though he were instructing someone else on cooking techniques. By the end of the novel, he and maybe-boyfriend appear to be planning to run away with one another to South America or Cuba.  

Real milkman, also known as “the man who didn’t love anybody,” is the actual local milkman. He is one of the community’s beyond-the-pales, which middle sister ascribes to his behavior when, returning from a trip abroad, he learned the paramilitaries had buried a stash of rifles in his yard: While angrily digging up the rifles, he yelled at the crowd who had gathered to watch him. Over the years, he continued to challenge the paramilitaries on issues like their kangaroo courts and their habit of “disappearing” enemies.

In reality, this perceived belligerence is an indication of real milkman’s perceptiveness and good nature; he doesn’t approve of violence or injustice, he and is quick to help anyone in need. He is also one of the only people in the community who feels that women may have legitimate concerns, and he suggests that middle sister go speak to them about milkman’s harassment.

Later in the novel, real milkman is shot by state forces who confuse him with milkman. While he is recovering in the hospital, ma and several other neighborhood women pay multiple visits to him, and the truth about his nickname emerges: real milkman was at one point the most sought-after bachelor in the community, but he refused to marry anyone but ma’s friend Peggy, who left him to become a nun. After nearly dying, however, real milkman changes his mind on matters of romance; as the novel ends, he is implied to be in a fledgling relationship with ma. 

Longest friend is middle sister’s earliest and most trusted friend. She and middle sister have gone their separate ways since leaving school—longest friend is deeply invested in politics, pays scrupulous attention to everything going on around her, and is affiliated with the paramilitaries—but middle sister continues to see her as a confidante. For this reason, it comes as a shock when longest friend sits middle sister down for a talk, informing her that her behavior has made her one of the community’s beyond-the-pales. Middle sister and longest friend drift apart after this meeting, though middle sister attends her friend’s wedding some months later. Roughly a year after that, longest friend’s husband is killed, followed three months later by longest friend herself. 

Eldest sister is the oldest of middle sister’s female siblings. She is married and a mother, but she continues to pine for her ex-boyfriend, whom she dumped for cheating on her and who was later killed by a bomb. Nevertheless, she acts the part of a deferential wife to her husband, first-brother-in-law, turning a blind eye to his faults and intervening when he becomes concerned about middle sister’s relationship with milkman. This causes a great deal of friction between her and middle sister, not only because milkman’s attentions are unwanted, but also because first-brother-in-law himself frequently harasses middle sister: “I had just so much anger—at her, for being the wee wife, for doing always exactly what he told her to, and at him, for trying to put his own contemptibleness over onto me” (4). However, after milkman’s death and first-brother-in-law’s beating, eldest and middle sister’s relationship improves, and eldest sister throws herself into helping their mother attract real milkman’s affections.

Eldest sister married first-brother-in-law on the rebound. He was 35 at the time and therefore considerably older than his wife; he is also sexually predatory towards his young sisters-in-law, having begun making crude remarks to middle sister when she was only 12. His constant harassment of girls and women eventually goes too far when he approaches some nuns and asks them sexually suggestive questions about Bernini’s Ecstasy of Saint Teresa; the nuns go the paramilitaries, who beat first-brother-in-law up as punishment.  

Tablets girl is a “small, slight, wiry girl nearing thirty who put[s] poison in people’s drinks” (215). No one in the community understands why she does this or how she chooses her targets, though some suspect she is in league with the local feminist group. Nevertheless, the ongoing conflict with the government makes it impossible to involve the police or courts, while the general mistrust of authority prevents those who are poisoned from going to the hospital. As a result, the community does its best to deal with tablets girl’s behavior on its own, keeping a watch on her in public places and employing home remedies to treat her victims.

Middle sister herself becomes one of these victims when tablets girl—having heard about her supposed relationship with milkman—accuses her of having helped milkman to kill her and 23 other women during a past life. Tablets girl’s younger sister later discovers a lengthy letter, written by and to tablets girl, shedding additional light on her motives: She lives in a perpetual state of fear of virtually everything, including the consequences of letting go of her fear. She therefore comes to see her optimistic younger sister as a threat and tries to poison her several times. In this way, tablets girl offers a stark example of the splits trauma can cause in a person’s psyche: tablets girl quite literally believes her sister is a part of her that needs to be destroyed in order to secure psychological harmony. Ultimately, however, tablets girl herself is murdered—probably by milkman in retaliation for middle sister’s poisoning.

Second sister is one of middle sister’s older siblings. She is notorious in the neighborhood for having married a Protestant loyalist and “going to live in some country over the water, maybe event that country over that water” (48). On the one occasion she returned to visit her family, she was arrested and flogged by local renouncers; she hasn’t returned since, even after the death of her husband.

Third sister is one of middle sister’s older sisters. She spends much of her time drinking with friends, and is very proud of the miniature hedge that stands in front of her house: “This was [...] a foot high, ‘a feature’ as my sister called it, but it hadn’t been able to feature because of people forgetting it was there and pushing through it or falling over it” (15).

Tablet girl’s younger sister is 18 years old, and “unanimously agreed upon to be one of the rare shining” (90)—that is, someone who is untouched by the cynicism that prevails in society at large. Unlike the beyond-the-pales, tablet girl’s sister seems aware of the Troubles, but remains hopeful and kind in the face of them. This is incomprehensible to those around her, but she is too good-natured not to like; wee sisters in particular adore her, and third brother remains in love with her even after marrying another woman. However, her attempts to cheer up her older sister only lead tablets girl to view her with suspicion, and she is ultimately poisoned five times at her sister’s hands. The last attempt impairs her vision and leaves her physically weak, but also leads to her reunion with third brother, who rushes to take her to the hospital. 

The paramilitary groupies are the girlfriends and mistresses of the district’s paramilitary fighters. These women occupy a complex position in the community. On the one hand, the local celebrity of the paramilitaries ensures that any woman attached to one also wields considerable power. At the same time, however, the groupies are seen as sexually suspect; many of the paramilitaries have wives, but even those who don’t are seen as embodying a kind of “untamed maleness” that “a proper girl, a normal girl, a girl with morals intact and a sensibility attuned to what’s civilised and respectful” would not find attractive (122).

As middle sister eventually discovers, the groupies pride themselves on precisely the things the community at large objects to. Far from fearing the violent lives their boyfriends lead, they find it vicariously exciting: “All that confident, fantastic, elemental male presence. It’s a force of nature” (126). They see themselves in similarly melodramatic terms, telling middle sister that they aren’t like “[t]he common woman,” who, “[t]akes no gamble, is terrified of risk, fills her life with timid tasks and mundane men” (126). All in all, the novel frames these women as self-deluded, but also critiques the rigid gender roles they’re condemned for flouting. 

The “issue women” is the name given to the neighborhood feminist organization. These seven women periodically travel downtown to attend citywide meetings, and they also hold weekly discussions in their own district. They are a source of much confusion and suspicion, both because they’re occupied with political concerns other than the Troubles, and because they represent a threat to the community’s traditional gender norms. For instance, when they attempt to hold their meetings in one of the chapel’s tin hutments, rumors quickly spread about their goals and practices:

‘If they get a hutment,’ said the area, ‘they could be up to anything in it. They could be plotting subversive acts in it. They could be having homosexual intercourse in it. They could be performing and undergoing abortions in it’ (156).

The issue women are shielded from serious reprisals thanks to the district’s “traditional women,” who tell the renouncers that the feminists are “simpletons” (163) and that it would consequently be wrong to kill them. Tolerance, however, is all that most people in the district will extend. As a result, middle sister is reluctant to seek help from them even as milkman’s stalking intensifies, fearing she would be “committing social suicide” (152). 

Middle sister’s father dies sometime before the novel opens, but he features prominently in ma’s complaints and scoldings; anything that is “in any way dark, any way into the shadow” (84) reminds her of his recurring bouts of depression. These episodes frustrated and confused his wife, who felt that he was being self-indulgent. In this way, his situation parallels that of middle sister, whose suffering is similarly invisible and incomprehensible to a society completely preoccupied by civil unrest.

In point of fact, politics were actually something of an obsession for middle sister’s father; he had an extensive archive of papers documenting the Troubles, and often met with friends to discuss them. Burns implies that this hobby was largely an outlet for less clearly defined feelings of angst; da would take similar interest in any other dark topics he stumbled across while watching TV (the Holocaust, natural disasters, etc.). One possible clue as to the origins of his depression comes from his deathbed admission that he was sexually abused as a boy. Regardless of their cause, however, his struggles with mental illness made him a distant and—due to intermittent hospitalization—sometimes physically absent father.  

Third brother is middle sister’s twin, but as he is married by the time the novel opens, he plays only a minor role in the narrative. It ultimately emerges that he, like many in the community, settled for a spouse he didn’t love out of fear; his true love (and former girlfriend) is tablets girl’s shiny sister, and when he hears that she has been poisoned, he rushes to her side, “[sweeps] his true wife off her feet and up into his arms” and “switching from earlier declarations of love and self-idiocy to ‘urgent need of medical care and attention’” (275), takes her to the hospital.

Nuclear Boy is one of Somebody McSomebody’s younger brothers. He is 15 years old and one of the community’s beyond-the-pales on account of his Cold War obsession. This anxiety about nuclear war strikes most people as bizarre, given the political unrest plaguing Northern Ireland in general and his family in particular: “Never worried he didn’t, when his favourite brother’s head got blown off in the middle of the street, right there in front of him” (62). He eventually commits suicide, “leaving a note which astounded everybody: It is because of Russia and because of America that I am doing this” (133).  

Second brother was the second oldest of middle sister’s brothers. By the time the novel opens, second brother is dead; he had dropped out of school and joined the renouncers by the time he turned 14, and was ultimately killed in a shootout with state forces.

Fourth brother is not middle sister’s biological sibling; rather, he was the oldest friend of second brother, and eventually moved in with his friend’s family. Like second brother, he became a renouncer, and he has been on the run (possibly in Ireland) since “shooting up that patrol during which deliberately he’d killed four state people and accidentally three ordinary people—one adult and two six-year-olds, standing at their countryside bus-stop waiting for their bus” (274).

Nigel and Jason are the nicknames given to the married “clerk and [...] clerkess, who catalogued, regulated, and updated” (23) the list of names the community considers disloyal—that is, too British. The nicknames are an inside joke, not only because “Jason” is a woman, but because both names are among those that are informally banned.

French teacher is the instructor of the adult education classes middle sister attends. Middle sister describes her as one of the “shiny” people, and her aesthetic appreciation of things like literature and sunsets sparks confusion and mockery amongst her students.

The international couple are a pair of world-renowned, champion ballroom dancers from middle sister’s district. The husband and wife are in fact maybe-boyfriend’s parents, but they left home to pursue their dancing careers when he was 12 and his older brothers were in their teens. They left the house to their sons, none of whom seem to resent their parents for concluding that “[s]eeing things in right relation [they] should never have had children” (39). The couple is also notable for having become famous enough to draw the respect and admiration of everyone in the city, regardless of political or religious affiliation. In this respect, they are a symbol of hope and healing, particularly when all the local girls begin taking to the streets to practice waltzing.