Her novel is, in many ways, an attempt to show how abnormal this normality was, the lack of names giving it an almost dystopian, futuristic quality. “I see it as a fiction about an entire society living under extreme pressure, with longterm violence seen as the norm.” I write it and then I see: Oh yes, this is sexual abuse, this is sexual scandal, this is a book about rumours and gossip
I would like to think it could be seen as any sort of totalitarian, closed society existing in similarly oppressive conditions,” Burns explains. “Although it is recognisable as this skewed form of Belfast, it’s not really Belfast in the 70s. It is actually set in an unnamed city, in an unknown era (references to Kate Bush, Sigourney Weaver and Freddie Mercury give us a clue), the characters known only in terms of their relationships to others. Milkman, a novel ostensibly about the trauma of growing up during the Troubles in 1970s Belfast, unexpectedly beat American heavyweight Richard Powers’ eco-epic The Overstory and Esi Edugyan’s exuberant slave survival story, Washington Black, to the prize. “I still can’t get back to writing,” she says, “but let’s not talk about that today. She is still in a lot of pain (the result of a surgical injury), and the interview is conducted with her perched on a low table or, periodically, standing up.
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