Milkman, as I'm sure you know, won the 2018 Man Booker Prize, and since then it has been widely reviewed and acclaimed, deservedly so. It's a genuinely original and fresh novel, like nothing I've ever read, that evokes Joyce but is a little more readable. It's set in an unnamed city, a bit like Belfast, during the 1970s, where to stand out is to be dangerous and in danger. It's a novel of gossip and hearsay, written in a unique stream of consciousness style, which takes a bit of getting used to, but by the end conventional fiction seems bland and colourless by comparison. None of the characters are named - there's Somebody McSomebody, The Milkman, Maybe Boyfriend, the narrator is Middle Sister. The sentences are sometimes paragraphs long, and convoluted, but if the reader pays attention, they make perfect sense. One of the very best books I've read for some years.