Little Constructions: Author of the Man Booker Prize-winning novel Milkman

After Milkman, which I loved, and No bones, which was also excellent I didn’t know what to expect. This book is is set in an indeterminate country which feels a bit like the U.S. but then the language makes it sound more like somewhere in the British Isles. It’s about crime and violence, men, women, children, family, neglect, mental health, history and the possibility of forgiveness. It’s dark and brutal in places, but also exhilarating. A lot of characters have very similar names which is confusing but also very funny. That’s actually a good summary of the book - confusing and very funny. The prominent narrator takes you by the hand, as it were, and pulls you here and there, back and forth through the present and the past, never letting go right to the end. You need to go with it - it’s a rollercoaster ride, dizzying but 100% worth it.

I listened to this as an audio book and enjoyed it so much I bought a copy to read and several for friends as well. I loved the style of writing, the humor, the darkness and the gems of truth scattered throughout the story.Usually something so disjointed would not suit me but the quality of language used was so impressive that I was swept along with the characters, the asides and the meanderings. This is one of the most unusual books I have ever read and I am going to make sure I seek out and read Anna Burns other works.Some of the word play and word games which surface throughout this novel are extremely clever. She deals with some very dark subjects, such as incest, murder, violence, and at the same time there is a dark wit at play. Her ability to express the thoughts of various characters was astounding.If you are looking for something challenging and unique I would recommend this.

This has possibly my favourite first line of any book. Anna Burns is wonderful.

I bought this Little Constructions because I loved Milkman, but I really struggled with it. The diversions and ramblings that work so well in Milkman went over my head with this book.

To quote Dorothy Parker - “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.” I did not finish this one. It made no sense to me, so confusing..

all in good order

This might be of interest to anyone interesting in seeing the genesis of the style that worked so well in 'Milkman'.However, the "writing-whilst-talking" style that works so brilliantly in Milkman is here convoluted and confusing. It feels like a failed pilot.And I get it. It's supposed to be convoluted and confusing: Characters with the same name, and then there's the interchangeable Jotty and Jetty and Janet. Or is it Janice? I forget. There's the endless going-off-on-tangents. What's it actually about? How confusing stuff is? OK. In that case it works.Life is complicated and convoluted with endless dead ends. But we read novels to get away from this chaos. Not to read about a big mess of characters and events and spend half the time going "Hold on, which of the Toms is that? Which one is Jetty again? Is this in the now or the later? Who's now dead and who isn't anymore?"The first half of the book is good. However, the latter part feels like a brain dump which no-one felt they could actually edit into anything meaningful. And there's the sense of a few unpublished short stories that Burns maybe wrote as a teenager and has shoe-horned in there.It ended up being one of those where you are reading it only to get to the end. I finished it out of a sense of loyalty to Anna Burns because of what she achieved with the superb Milkman. Now I don't know what to do with "No Bones".As I say, it's interesting to see what was a first go at Milkman. The lessons of it Burns has clearly learnt.

In a quintessential, yet also satirical small Irish town, a woman walks into a gun shop, takes the first gun she sees, throws money at the appropriately dazed man, grabs some wrong ammo and gets in a cab. What follows is an often circumnavigated story about, again, a quintessential and satirized crime family that involves numerous murders—both past and “present”, incest, intense trauma, bad coping mechanisms, and the creation and ending of multiple narratives that allows those involved to go about their day-to-day.Narrated from an anonymous person within the town, clearly more integrated in the rumour mill, as they’re able to elucidate on much more than all that, but conveys it all the same, I think one of Burns intentions is to implicate everyone, in one way or another. The crime family mostly all have named starting with J, and the story starts with a Doe and John Doe to make clear, as I see it, that to distinguish them further than to allow for their being different people going through the following motions, they might as well be anybody. The factions might be in any town. The well meaning bystanders, the same. The gender dynamics and the mechanisms that allows for the violence of all stripes—mostly toward girls and women, both, mind—are indicative of every town like it. But probably every place with the same socialization, even if the more specific factors like Ireland and Those Specific Factions are particular, it’s no question that this could occur in other families elsewhere.It’s about people put into patterns not of their own making and holding them to account for it all the while not having anything systemic in society to address and break them out of them. There is a horrible insistence to these things. And Burns outright calls them evil. It’s vogue now to be speaking about moral relativism and grey morality and how people are both. The case that Burns brings us, though, is that there is also a lack of accountability and regardless of the trauma and unchecked behaviours, the people are responsible. As is the narrator and the peripheral components here. Our idea of Justice is as spoiled as how we raise these people set to rob people of agency. You can see it coming and the blind eye turns.It’s a biting, scathing thing that feels only right. We are invited into the horrible parts of some of these peoples’ lives, implicated therein, and the turns of phrase try to make us laugh even as they know it turns our stomachs. Deadly serious and darkly clever in its laughs soaked in derision. Even the narrator has to digress multiple times - a coping mechanism, I assume - expounding on seemingly innocuous things, but often signal out gender dynamics and disallow the reader of any notions that there might be an explanation that makes it all more comfortable.Never should it be, and certainly it isn’t here. I often had to take breaks from this. That’s how heavy it can be at times. But the prose are just right, as are the themes and the characters. Had we seen the prose refinement of Milk Man, this would have been an easy 5 star read. But it does vascular in it’s handling of the digressions. A few become tiresome and so circuitous to lose the thread. The voice is almost there, here. Make no mistake though, everything here is well worth Burns putting it to paper, and the reader to digest and sit with.

Das zweite Buch von Anna Burns erzählt die verwickelte und grausame Geschichte eines kriminellen Familienclans und dessen traumatisierten Mitglieder.Die Doe-Familie beherrscht als kriminelle Bande eine Kleinstadt über mehrere Jahrzehnte. Die Mitglieder der Familie sind alle tief verletzt und moralisch verwahlost. Als eines Tages Jetty Doe einen persönlichen, bizarren Rachefeldzug startet, bündeln sich verschiedene Schicksale in einem bizarren Feuerwerk von Gewalt und psychologischen Extremreaktionen, die noch Jahrzehnte später Auswirkungen haben.Ähnlich wie in Milkman anonymisiert Burns Ort, Zeit und Personen der Geschichte. Die Hauptpersonen heißen zumeist "Doe" und haben Vornamen die mit "J" beginnen, sie sind alle John / Jane Does, also Unbekannte. Auch Zeit und Ort der Geschichte sind unklar, wobei alles auf die zweite Hälfte des 20. Jhd. im angelsächsischen Raum hindeuten. Die Autorin lässt eine allwissende Erzählstimme die Geschichte berichten. Der besondere Dreh ist, dass die Stimme nicht nur erzählt, sondern psychologisch erläutert und beschreibt. Die Mitglieder des Doe-Clans sind über Generationen hinweg als kriminelle Bande und emotional und menschlich absolut verwahloste Sippe unterwegs. Die Familie verlangt Loyalität, verletzt aber jedes ihrer Mitglieder mit allen Verbrechen, die in Famlien vorkommen können. Gewalt, Inzest, Mord und Folter sind an der Tagesordnung und durch die immer heftigeren Ausbrüche verschwimmen durch Verdrängung und psychotische Ausbrüche die Grenzen zwischen Realität und Irrsinn. Diese Grausamkeiten kombiniert Burns mit einem lakonischen, witzigen Stil, so dass der Eindruck eines wahnsinnigen Comics oder eines überdrehten Splatterfilms entsteht. Dabei transportiert die Autorin aber, wie verheerend sich Gewalt und der Verlust von Moral und Ordnung vor allem auf Frauen auswirken. Und wie Frauen die Kraft aufbringen, nicht nur Rache zu üben, sondern den Teufelskreis zu durchbrechen.Wie schon Milkman ist auch dieser Roman für Nicht-Muttersprachler schwierig zu lesen. Anna Burns nutzt Slangausdrücke und Wortschöfpungen, die nicht immer geläufig sind. Der schnoddrige, orale Erzählton lässt immer mal wieder was aus oder springt. Und die Geschichte hüpft in verschiedenen Jahrzehnten und zwischen vielen ähnlichen Namen (Jetty, Jotty, Jane, Joe, John....) hin und her. Da muss man höllisch aufpassen, um nichts zu verpassen. Aber das Buch ist diese Mühe wert!

The authenticity is evident. No preaching, no sermonizing. Remarkable treatment of the subjects. Absolute must read for those in the field of recovery or for those who are survivors of abuse.

Am Anfang wirkt Burns' Stil begeisternd. Er ist sarkastisch, voll von schwarzem Humor. Nach und nach wirkt der Roman abgedreht, verliert den Faden, wird zunehmend hermetisch. Was anfangs im Fokus steht, spielt am Ende kaum noch eine Rolle: Aus einem Text, der das Innenleben eines Clans von Gewaltverbrechern schonungslos durchleuchtet, wird einer über Menschen, die sich und den Bezug zur Realität verlieren. Sehr schade.

This book was a waste of my money and time. I like the other book " Milkman " by the same author but this one is a total exercise in confusion!!!