Little Constructions

by Anna Burns

The new novel from Anna Burns, critically acclaimed author of 'No Bones'. An irate woman bursts into the best gun shop in the town of Tiptoe Floorboard, helps herself to a Kalashnikov rifle and sets off in a taxi on her mission of retribution. So begins this kaleidoscopic, surreal and enigmatic tale of dark deeds in a small town. At the centre of Anna Burns's startling new novel lies the Doe clan, a closely knit family of criminals and victims whose internal conflicts and convoluted relationships propel this simultaneously funny and terrifying story. Bound together by love and loyalty, fear and secrets, the Does and other inhabitants of Tiptoe Floorboard make up an unforgettable cast of characters. In a voice that is by turns chilling and wickedly funny, the narrator documents their struggle to make and maintain connections with each other, and -- weaving back and forth in time -- examines what transpires when unspeakable realities, long pushed from consciousness, begin to break through. Anna Burns's first novel 'No Bones' was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and this new novel secures her reputation as a writer of mesmerising originality and rare talent.

Genres: Fiction, Ireland, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Crime, Irish Literature, Novels

Hardcover

First published August 1, 2007

About the author

Anna Burns (born 1962) is an Irish author. She was born in Belfast and moved to London in 1987. Her first novel, No Bones, is an account of a girl's life growing up in Belfast during the Troubles.

Awards:
Winner of the 2001 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize
Shortlisted for the 2002 Orange Prize (No Bones)
Winner of the 2018 Man Booker Prize (Milkman)
National Book Critics Circle Award 2019 Nominee (Milkman)
Women's Prize for Fiction 2019 Nominee (Milkman)
Winner of the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award (Milkman)

Reviews

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anna Burns' second novel offers some fascinating insights into her development as a writer that came to fruition with Milkman, her well deserved winner of this year's Man Booker Prize.

This one is a black comedy set in a town known as Tiptoe Floorboard which is dominated by a violent criminal gang. There are plenty of names in this one, but the many members of the Doe family have similar names that are easily confused, most of them beginning with J, and the writing style is rambling and conversational. The unreliable narrator is never named, and never explains his role in the story except for his part in one episode near the end. In amongst all of the farcical elements there are plenty of darker elements, including murders, incest and child abuse. Although the setting is never explicitly stated, there are hints that once again we are in Northern Ireland - there are oblique references to paramilitary activities (the Fifth faction could be the IRA) but these are not the gang's primary focus.

An interesting and entertaining read, but not one I would recommend to anyone who struggled with Milkman.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hope you followed that for I had to sweep along at try to combine my rapidity with some sort of reason and succinctness.

Anna Burns Milkman was, rightly, awarded the 2018 Man Booker Prize, one of the strongest winners for many years.

Her 2001 debut novel, No Bones, also received significant recognition winning the (now defunct) Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize for the best regional novel of the year and being shortlisted for the 2002 Orange Prize (was is now The Women’s Prize for Fiction).

However her 2007 2nd novel, Little Constructions, received relatively little critical attention. Indeed at the time of writing this review, Goodreads showed just 18 ratings and 5 reviews for the book. But following the Man Booker win it has been reprinted and it certainly deserves to be more widely read.

One distinctive feature of Milkman (and which partly led to the mis-perception that the book was 'difficult') was the lack of names for the characters. Well in contrast Little Constriction is full of names - but they don't make things any simpler.

Within the first 14 pages we have already met Jetty Doe, Jotty Doe, Janet Doe, John Doe, Julie Doe, and JanineJoshuatine Doe (the last one person), as well as Jennifer Doe (Janet's friend) and Johnjoe Doe (John's right hand man) who aren't actually Doe's at all by birth but only by association. Indeed there are just two characters at that point who aren't Does, and helpfully they are both called Tom.

The book opens:

There are no differences between men and women. No differences. Except one. Men want to know what sort of gun it is. Women just want the gun. The door of the gunshop went ding! on Friday as Jetty Doe burst through it on a mission.

The 37 year-old Jetty bursts into Tom (that’s Gunshop Tom, i.e. Tom Spaders aka Gunshop Tom, not Tom Cusack aka Customer Tom)’s gunshop and grabs the first weapon to hand, which happens to be a Kalashnikov – although the two Tom’s note that she probably didn’t even care it was a AK74 rather than a AK47 – and a handful of completely incompatible ammunition, and rushes out, hailing a tax to venture off in likely vengeful search of other Doe’s unknown.

She is rapidly followed by various other Doe’s, including Johnjoe who isn’t of course a Doe, in pursuit of Jetty (who Tom (I can't remember which one) helpfully identifies as as one of the Doe sisters whose name begins with J).

But as the novel progresses, the reader starts to untangle the complicated family tree.

John Doe leads the 'Community Centre Teamwork Executive' in Tiptoe Under Greystone, actually a violent criminal gang whose shadiest activities, including torture and murder, largely take place in an underground lair under his garden shed (which perhaps explains the town's nickname - Tiptoe Under Floorboards).

John is one of 11 siblings - in order of age Benedict, JanineJoshuatine, Unity, Jotty, Samuel, John, the twins Abel and Abel, Gussie, Hale and Hesit. Except seemingly not being given a J name was a problem since:

Off record, I can tell you that, bar John and one and a half of his sisters, those initial children were now dead, or in jail, or had been removed long ago to join older-generation mad relatives in the Tiptoe Under Greystone Cliff's Peninsula Mental Ayslum.

the one and a half sisters being JanineJoshuatine - the half as she is halfway to joining her relatives in the Asylum - and Jotty:

Jotty Doe was her sister - and you remember Jotty? - the less-annoyed cousin who hadn't stabbed her mammy, in contrast to the very-annoyed cousin, Jetty, now with Kalashnikov, who once had.

We later learn the other brothers - Benedict, Samuel, Abel and Abel - were soldiers in the 'Fifth Faction' (a stand-in for the Provisional IRA) which is why John's criminal activities are tolerated by those that would otherwise enforce their own shadow justice.

John, Jotty and JanineJoshuatine are cousins to the aforementioned Jetty and her sister Janet, who works at the Almost Chemist of the Year, pretty much the only business in the town to not be under the control of John's gang, run instead by the Milkmanesque named Mr McSomebody, unlike the four gunshops and handy morgue housed within what is ostensibly a large sweet shop

Indeed the narrator suggests life might be easier for the men if women were gunshops:

If only we could get our erections and total sexual, emotional, spiritual and intellectual satisfactions from guns, bullets, postage stamps and such-like controllable essences. Wouldn't that be easy.

To add to the incestuous links, John is married to his cousin Janet, and having a long-running affair with her sister and his other cousin Jetty.

John and Janet have two - or possibly three - children - Julie, Judas and a reputed old sibling Jane, who the townfolk believe has moved away from the town (perhaps to Australia) but Jotty is convinced has been murdered by her father. And others, including John, dispute the existence of Jane altogether.

In the generation above, John's parents were Senior John and his Mammy, Jessie. Janet and Jetty's mother is John's Aunt Jacky - except Senior John had a long-running affair with his sister-in-law Jacky, leading Jessie to 'accidentally' kill him. And there are even rumours that one or both of Janet and Jetty might actually be Senior John's child and hence John's biological sister rather than his cousin. And indeed when Jetty is described as having 'once stabbed her mammy', which women she actually stabbed is rather unclear.

And in his gang, John's right hand man is JohnJoe Doe (actually JohnJoe Harrison) and his left-hand man Uncle Joe Doe (also not a Doe). Or rather 'was' Uncle Joe, as he had recently been beaten and executed by the Doe gang, suspected of having informed to the authorities. And as the novel opens, Uncle Joe's nephew JerryJudges is in the middle of suffering the same fate, watched over by his girlfriend Teenage Mascot. Joe also has murderous intentions towards JimmyJesus, who is dating his 15 year old daughter Julie.

And then there are Customer Tom, Tom Cusack, married to Angelus, and best friend of Gunshop Tom Spaders, who just before the novel opened had had a brief fling with Jotty. You remember Jotty? - the less-annoyed cousin who hadn't stabbed her mammy, in contrast to the very-annoyed cousin, Jetty, now with Kalashnikov, who once had.

Confused - well it's actually all quite clear and a lot of fun to unravel. Although even the police are confused, as they try to infiltrate the gang.

You remember Betty, the great policewoman soulmate buddy of Janet? She tried a similar move on Jetty, not realising that just because two women were sisters, and had names that began with the same letter, and worked together at the same chemist, and lived together as the same house, and had sex with the same gang leader, didn't mean their minds were exactly the same as well.

But in case of any confusion one only needs consult the official records - the archives of the Birth Deaths and Rumours That Are Probably True at the Town Hall.

The key action of the novel takes place in a very short-time frame, with the Kalashnikov-armed Jetty on the rampage, John intervening violently in the Julie and Jimmy-Jesus relationship, and the police, themselves under investigation from an Interfering Foreign Policeman in something of a pseudo Stevens inquiry, launching a raid on the Doe underground headquarters. Although the story itself travels back and forth in time, to both the past and present of the Doe family, Jotty in particular (you remember Jotty? - the less-annoyed cousin who hadn't stabbed her mammy, in contrast to the very-annoyed cousin, Jetty, now with Kalashnikov, who once had.).

The story told is very black indeed, involving not just terrorist and criminal gangs, gun-running, extortion and murder, but also incest, rape and child abuse. Indeed untangling Jotty's dark secret and the reason for her obsession with the mysterious Jane Doe provides the novel's key moment of narrative revelation.

But despite this grim backdrop, the only acceptable emotion to express is to admit to being "upset and annoyed."

The mixture of very serious content with a darkly comical narration is highly reminiscent of Anakana Schofield's brilliant Martin John (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...).

Overall - not as brilliantly crafted as Milkman, but then few books are, but highly worthwhile and hopefully one that Burns's Booker win will encourage many people to read.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the week of Anna Burns much deserved win in the 2018 Booker prize – I attended an event at London’s most famous bookshop – Foyles, where the Man Booker winner gave a reading and was interviewed by the literary editor of the New Statesman.

In the New Statesman, simplified write up what was a key interview she is quoted as saying

“In my first book, No Bones, the critics seemed to think I was writing about a dysfunctional family to show up the dysfunctional society, but it was actually the other way round. The Troubles was the backdrop and the family stuff felt more important and urgent. I think it’s because I’ve resolved something about family issues that I can now do the “bigger” issue – which actually, for me, is the lesser issue.”

My own recollection is that her answer was more complex. I recall her saying that her first book "No Bones" was dealing with her issues as an individual; her second “Little Constructions” with her issues with the family unit; and that finally now in her third book “Milkman” she was able to consider her issues with the society in which she grew up.

And that fits my views on “No Bones” – which in my review (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) I described as examining the long run mental effects of a dysfunctional family (in a dysfunctional society) on an individual.

Anna Burns, in a recent interview with The Irish Times, described this her second novel, as

“not, for me, about any Northern Irish paramilitary organisation, or about the Troubles, or any government administration of any area . . . for me, it’s about the domestic madness and collusion of the family and associates of the insane leader of a murder gang. That could be any murder gang. What does their consciousness do with what it really knows all along but has to pretend to itself that it doesn’t know?”

And again I would agree with this description – the book I feel examines, in its widest sense, dysfunctional (particularly violently so) and abusive families (or communities). Further its real subject is how those families/community units only continue exist due to the fear-induced self-deception and unwillingness to even acknowledge to oneself the abuse (let alone to confront it within the family unit, or to admit it to others outside that unit) that is practiced by other family members, including the victims themselves. She also examines how the winder community can often collude in the violence – far too often (my interpretation) taking the message of the Good Samaritan as being that those that passed by on the other side, avoided personal cost.

A more detailed review of the plot of the book is in Paul’s review here – and his comparison to “Martin John” is an interesting one as, just like with that book, I found at times the combination of humour and the subject matter crossed a line for me.

I would also nuance slightly Paul’s apparent contrast between the (now famous) lack of names in “Milkman” and the over-abundance of them in “Little Constructions”. Instead I would see this book as a large step away from the standard nomenclature of “No Bones”, towards the techniques that Burns used in her Booker Prize winning book.

John Doe (to quote Burns above “the insane leader of a murder gang”) and Jane Doe (whose ultimate fate or even existence forms the limited plot of the novel) as well as variations on the Doe theme - are of course the fictitious names used in British (and more these days) American law, in cases where the person’s real identity is either deliberately being concealed (for anonymity purposes) or is unknown (commonly for example Jane Doe is typically used for unidentified female corpses).

The link with that Burns is trying to examine in this book is of course clear – as is the way in which the ploliferation of Doe’s ends up mirrored in the “third-brother-in-law” etc approach of Milkman.

We also see the naming of various groups (for example the Ordinary Decent and the Fifth Faction) presaging the similar treatment in “Milkman” and the naming of an imaginary town (Tiptoe Floorboard) as a large step towards the unnamed town of “Milkman”.

Overall a fascinating read and even more fascinating step along the literary journey that lead to the best Booker winner for many years.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an unbearable comic novel about an Irish crime family and their various misadventures, as told by one of the gang.

The narrator is a traumatised blatherer, more intellectual than your average Irish gang member, who tells the story in a rambling ironic style, painting the family as cartoon characters, killing intrigue with a relentless barrage of comedic asides, boring psychobabble and randomly capitalised character names, like The Other Policeman, and such.

Some of the humour is hilarious, and had the author exercised restraint and chosen a less inscrutable structure—leaping back and forth over twenty-five years, in and out of scenes, giving no sense of place or time—this might have been an outrageously good satire. As it stands, the narrator is unbearable, like a mad auntie having a nervous breakdown, going on and on and on until you want to tear out her vocal chords and bake a pie.

It’s clever and funny, but the end result is a densely packed swag bag of ambition that never coheres into something beautiful.

[Marc · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I loved "Milkman", I did not love this novel. I was confused, lost, and didn't connect with the story or the characters. There were bits of really good stuff here, but overall I have to say I did not enjoy reading this at all.

[Bridget · Rating 3 out of 5]

I do love how this author strings words together. “They’re so romantic, and again, I mean women. They think something’s going to go a certain way and their energy spins and spangles and they get out their ribbons of detailed thought and their painstakingly hand-made heart tinsel. By now, everything’s painted, borders festooned, all in sentimental, joyous anticipation. Well, all I can say is, disappointment is an extremely downplayed word.”

[Robert Wechsler]

The most fascinating thing about what I read of this novel is how much of the quirkiness in her most recent novel, Milkman, was part of her repertoire ten years earlier. However, this novel is much more absurd, in ways I didn’t enjoy; her quirks seem more imposed than they do in Milkman; and the structure seems randomly fluid, although it might have seemed less random if I’d stayed with the novel.

[Nothando · Rating 1 out of 5]

To quote the talented Dorothy Parker “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
Terrible book with sprawling convoluted “trying-to-be-too-clever” plot line that just left me baffled, annoyed and highly dissatisfied...I will never get back the precious hours I spent reading this “much acclaimed” novel.

[Paula · Rating 5 out of 5]

Burns is an extraordinary writer; an acute observer of human nature and a superb magician with words.
Reminds me of Mantel,as reading their books is like being hit by a train -in a good way.
Little Constructions,which might seem disjointed,and a little crazy,is in fact a powerful and compassionate dissection of abuse,trauma,human foibles,people's darkness and light;it's also an insightful social commentary.
And again,her command of,and playfulness with language are astonishing.
Hats off.

[Chloe Price · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is altogether confusing. It isn’t clear when Burns jumps back and forwards in time and most of the novel is just ramblings. The plot doesn’t drive forward and the names of the characters are too similar and confusing, so I was still unsure who was who on the last page. Not a fan of her writing style.

[Fraser Simons · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Welcome to Tiptoe Floorboard, a nasty little village, presumably in the North of Ireland, where the John Doe Community Centre Group enjoys a stranglehold over the town’s affairs. John Doe is the charismatic, hyper-violent leader of this criminal enterprise; he routinely tortures his enemies in the romper room hidden in the shed in his back garden, leaving their bodies in the kitchen for his children to find.

Thankfully, Tiptoe Floorboard, a.k.a. Tiptoe Under Greystone Cliff, isn’t a real place but the invention of Anna Burns, whose third and most recent novel, “Milkman,” won the 2018 Man Booker Prize — the first time it was awarded to a writer born in Northern Ireland. The success of “Milkman” has introduced new readers to the region’s troubled history, which has a peculiar tendency to creep into the present.

That success also led to the American release of “Little Constructions,” Burns’ second novel, first published in 2007 — a book that is shorter, darker and every bit as enthralling as her breakout success. Whereas “Milkman” concerns itself with the reification of rumor and innuendo in a city (likely Belfast) riddled with sectarian strife, in “Little Constructions” the focus is on the family and how trauma is passed from one generation to the next. And what a wild family it is.

John Doe is married to Janet Doe but having an affair with Janet’s sister Jetty, not to be confused with Jotty, who is one of John’s 10 siblings, most of whom will end up either in the graveyard or Tiptoe Under Greystone Cliff’s Peninsula Mental Asylum. Apparently, John’s infidelity runs in the family. John Doe’s father, John Doe Sr., also had extramarital relations with his wife’s sister, and the identity of her children has far-reaching implications for both the Doe clan and the novel.

Further complicating the picture, there are two kinds of Does in Tiptoe Floorboard: “the Does by affinity and the Does by consanguinity.” Uncle Joe Doe isn’t John’s uncle but his left-hand man in the Community Centre Action Team or “Shed Gang.” John’s right-hand man, Johnjoe Doe, is actually a Harrison, but teaming up with John Doe apparently is like joining the Ramones — if the Ramones had a predilection for torture murder and were fond of using a Ouija board to root out informers.

The names are disorienting, but their anonymity avoids ascribing the gang’s criminal behavior to a particular faction (readers will bring their own biases to the book). The surname certainly suggests that these men and women were destined to wear a toe tag.

Humor and death amble side by side, as when the murderers forget themselves in spooky stories: “They’d stop for a break, for example, whilst in the middle of killing somebody, and over the boiling kettle and KitKats, they’d begin a round of the latest ghost talk. They’d scare each other with their tales, to the point of forgetting they had a man tortured and three-quarters dead and tied to a chair just across the room from them.”

The violence in “Little Constructions” is normalized to the same degree that gossip is weaponized in “Milkman.” This novel’s tone is slightly more high-pitched than the Booker winner, calling to mind a weird mixture of the gothic grotesqueries of Patrick McCabe’s novel “The Butcher Boy” and the saga of a bloodthirsty Celtic king of yore.

But Burns is less interested in the goons who perpetuate the cycle of violence than she is in following its victims. Here’s John Doe’s 15-year-old daughter, Julie, coming home during a break at her part-time job to find a dead body: “You walk in, and you don’t want to drop dead yourself from the up-close reality of it, so either you play a ruse upon yourself and say the dead body’s not there really, or else you take an aspect of the dead body that strikes you as normal and pretend to yourself that, because of this normality, everything else is the same as before.”

By pretending not to see what is right in front of her eyes, Julie is forced to become a bystander in her own home, hewing to what she considers the town’s credo: “If it’s happening to you then, thank God, it’s not happening to me.” If the atrocities she encounters are real, she’ll have to do something about them, and that’s much more frightening than a body on the floor. By denying the reality of these horrors, Julie can cope — at least until the psychic toll comes due.

In “Little Constructions,” reality is kept at arm’s length and everyone does their part to maintain the status quo. Therapists sit for decades with clients who never speak a word. The police are compromised and incompetent. Even the town government is unreliable, keeping an official record of Births, Deaths, and Rumors That Are Probably True. Meanwhile the citizens stagger about “in this dreadful abyss of brokenness, this dead valley of hopelessness, this nethermost pit of faithlessness.”

The novel’s narrator is an unnamed bystander, one who is intimate with every villager’s secret history — even the secrets they shelter from themselves — and whisks the reader forward and back across time to show us how the sins of the past manifest in the future. The narrator’s quintessentially Irish deadpan humor elevates the seriousness of Burns’ endeavor, making it more than just another bleak story about The Troubles. It’s a dizzying ride, by turns horrifying and hilarious, but exquisitely managed by Burns’ baroque but precise prose.

“Little Constructions” is a prayer not just for the people of Tiptoe Floorboard, but for towns just like it all over the world, scarred by violence and transformed into a place where the dead walk alongside the living, the living enfold themselves in little constructions, and the currency in which the community traffics is shame that stems from a trauma that refuses to be named.

This review originally ran in the Los Angeles Times.
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[Marc Nash · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely mad, freewheeling energy surge. The Third Policeman but with brutality rather than whimsy. A literary version of a Tarantino movie. h plot is unfathomable, populated by characters whose names beginning with J and who you can't keep straight in you mind and a timeline that jumps around all over the place, but none of this maters. Some wondrously and bitterly funny riffs and rants, the ones of psychotherapy bing the best. 4.5 stars

Video review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcT_-...

[Gregory · Rating 4 out of 5]

After thoroughly enjoying her deservedly award-winning Milkman, I at once searched in vain for Anna Burns’ earlier novels in several large bookstores. Finally ordered one from UK and am so glad I did. From the first hilarious, energetic page of Little Constructions, I was hooked.
John Doe, the murderous lech who runs the gang that runs the little town everyone calls Tiptoe Floorboards, is married to Janet; father of Judas, Jesse Judges, Jotty, Janine, Unity, Hale and Hesit; and presently philandering with Jetty.
The witty treatment of so much action, characterization and dialogue by a prickly, first-person “bystander” narrator almost tricked me into thinking this a superbly written dark comedy romp. Then came chapter 6 – one of the most moving, maddening depictions of teenage male street violence against an innocent middle-aged woman ever written.
Not long after, we learn the back story of Jotty, the sole plain, unmarried one of the gorgeous, felonious Doe sisters. Deeply scarred by father John Doe’s sexual abuse, she goes to thrice-weekly therapy sessions (but never once speaks) and earnestly buys and accepts as gifts hundreds of self-help books. Bookworms everywhere will giggle over the descriptions of her struggles:
“'Must read them, oh, I must read them, simply must read them. I might get cured.’ So she’d pick the latest book up. But the moment of ‘is-ness,’ of ripeness, of propitious occasion, never, ever came upon her. An instant heaviness, a ponderous drugginess, a self-protective lassitude would come over Jotty whenever she tried to read one of them. ‘If only I would read them,’ she yawned, ‘I might find out stuff.’ She’d attempt. I mean she’d attempt to open one. But she’d get overwhelmed by the tyranny of having to do so and would set the book back down. Then she’d lie down herself and fall asleep." (179)
Even with minor annoyances like the many confusingly similar character names, the book has more than enough imaginative wit and heart to demand future rereadings.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I listened to this as an audio book and enjoyed it so much I am going to buy a copy to read 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.

[Millstone · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've read a few books by Booker prize winners that I didn't enjoy, including some of the ones they won with, but none as bad as this. At the end, I wasn't sure what had happened or which characters were supposed to be real (within the story) and which imagined by others and I didn't really care. It was just a relief to finish it. Looking back at it after a few days, I'm not even sure there was a story as such, just a 300 page description of an imaginary town and the fantasies of its inhabitants. I may pass on her prize winning book - it will take a while to forget this one.

[S Carden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Playful, vicious and wildly odd, with bits of brilliance that are well worth persevering through the tricksiness for. Some reviewers here seem disappointed that this isn't a realist novel or a genre crime thriller - how depressing.

[gabrielle v · Rating 5 out of 5]

"There are no differences between men and women. No differences. Except one. Men want to know what sort of gun it is. Women just want the gun."

This novel had its flaws - a little too windy, a little too chatty - but was also one of the most brilliant works I've ever read. The kaleidoscopic effects of violence as the fabric of a family and a society was so impeccably conveyed - everything is so disorienting, so circular, and at so many moments I was speechless at how impeccably Burns could articulate life and its tripwires.

I will be thinking of these Irish women forever - comparing the lessons they learn from therapy sessions, where they sit in complete silence three times a week, made me laugh every time. The breakthrough (instigated by a therapist raising one eyebrow silently) that her whole life she actually might not have just been feeling "upset and annoyed" but "quite possibly something much, much worse" all along was brilliant. Anna... love u 4ever

[Renée Peereboom · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5
Het raarste boek dat ik in tijden gelezen heb, en eerlijk gezegd was het best hard werken (en heb ik tussendoor ook andere boeken gelezen). Heel verwarrend, veel zijpaadjes, namen die expres enorm op elkaar lijken. Maar ook enorm veel humor. De heftigste dingen worden met zoveel humor verteld, verkrachting, moord, de heftigste trauma’s, en op de een of andere manier werkt het heel goed. Dus als je zin hebt in een boek waarbij je om de zoveel tijd een stukje opnieuw moet lezen omdat je het niet meer helemaal volgt, maar waarbij je soms wel hardop moet lachen om de absurditeit en de heerlijke stem van de verteller: lees dit!

[Amelia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Anna Burns' writing! In this novel you can see similarities to Milkman, even if the story is a very different one. I am not able to describe properly, what this book really is about, because there's a lot going on. You have to be open for a rollercoaster ride and a lot of darkness, that lies underneath some hilarious scenes and dialogues. Also this book demands a lot of attention. This isn't a book for everyone, but if you loved Milkman or if you are into weirdness and dense writing, you should definitely give it a go.

[A.M. · Rating 2 out of 5]

it was fun on certain moments but to be honest, i don't really enjoyed this book that much. the words are pretty good, i like it 'cause it seems i'm in a conversation. i just don't know where it leads me to or how the story goes. i was lost.

the first few lines of the first chapter got me hooked up though. it says, "there are no differences between men and women. no differences. except one. men want to know what sort of gun it is. women just want the gun."

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked it, but I couldn't finish it. It has many of the same brilliant aspects as Milkman, but after 200 pages of frenzied sex and violence, and sexual violence, I felt as though I had been severely beaten about the head by a large bag of hornets' nests. And I'm not quite sure how I feel about that, though the language is stunning.

https://www.npr.org/2020/02/22/807893...
May give it another try another time.

[Joyfulls · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall I was lost in this novel but I did find real people and experiences in the words.

[Katy]

Do yourself a favor and just read Milkman. Heavy content warning for both

[Dfbushnell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I tried this bc Milkman is one of the best books I've read in a long time, but I didn't get very far into this one before I stopped. There's definitely a writer with a gift at work here, but it didn't click for me. It was a little bit too chaotic stream of consciousness.

[Fen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've only read two of Anna Burns' books, but she is utterly unique, and possibly my favorite living writer (I'll decide after I finish her other two books!). When I read Milkman in 2019, I gave it four stars due to some nitpicky issue I had with the ending, but it's stuck with me more than any other contemporary book I've read in the two intervening years. I only wish I had read more of Burns' books sooner. I think I looked a few times in 2019 and it was a hassle to get her other books in the U.S. She sort of settled in my mind as a one-hit wonder.

I remember seeing news in 2020 that this novel, her second, had been published in the U.S. for the first time. Sadly I was turned off by negative reviews, so I did not rush to read it. Which was frankly silly because Milkman also had mixed reviews--she's a polarizing writer. Then recently I was in the mood for eccentric stream-of-consciousness, so I just decided to ignore the haters and go for it.

This book is a gem. I can nitpick stuff, as I'm prone to do, thus the four stars. But the book is more than the sum of its parts. Anna Burns is one of those authors who is not palatable to many readers (look at the average rating for this book, eek!), but she is perfect for the right kind of reader, and that reader is me. I love idiosyncratic narrators, stream-of-consciousness, excessive digressions, dark humor, etc., and I also love books that touch on feminist themes and explore the psychology of their characters. This book is all of that, and so much more.

Little Constructions is a book about trauma. It's the trauma of being part of an unhealthy family, headed by an odious patriarch who inflicts harm on his family and his community. It's about living with that trauma on a day-to-day basis, how it shapes you as a person, in conscious and unconscious ways. It's about being part of a community where everyone has to live in fear. There are a few central events the novel revolves around, but truthfully, it's not about those events at all. They simply provide a foundation so Burns can grab onto one character or another and explore how trauma has affected them.

I have read about child sexual abuse, and other kinds of abuse explored in this book, but I have never seen it written about in a way that makes sense to me, as a survivor of [a different type of abuse] myself. Most books are linear; abuse is a discrete event, it ends, and maybe a small nod is made to the victim's trauma later. In real life, trauma is not linear and cannot be explained using the conventions of literary realism, like it is in most fiction. Burns understands this. She jumps back and forth in time and utilizes metaphor upon absurdity upon atrocity to paint a much different picture. The Devil is in the details: the "trauma clothing," Jotty's immense collection of trauma books, the metaphor about the wallpaper.

Burns is also very interested in dynamics between men and women, masculinity and femininity. For symbolism, look no further than the book's opening scene. Guns are the ultimate phallic symbol, and it's no coincidence that Jetty, a woman, runs into a gun shop full of men and steals one for herself. This symbolism is cleverly inverted at the end when, the masculine violence inflicted on the community lessens, so the gun shop transforms into a symbol of femininity in the form of a fancy bra shop. It's smart but hilarious--I don't know how Burns comes up with these things. There is also social commentary about the pressure on women to get married, and keep up the appearance of a happy marriage even when the marriage is not happy at all. Of course, instead of putting it in boring terms like I am, Burns explains that the Doe sisters have imaginary husbands who treat them kindly in the ways their real husbands do not.

Burns' wit, verve, and a certain comic book sensibility make Little Constructions hard to put down, despite the difficult subject matter. I read it very quickly, and it's so well-constructed and complex, I imagine I could read it again and find a lot of things I missed the first time. In the course of writing this review, I've already nearly forgotten the problems I had with it. Hmm, I remember thinking it was a bit heavy-handed at points, like a self-help book, but I suspect Burns was going for satire of a self-help book, in part. So... maybe that's the point?

[Rae · Rating 4 out of 5]

An absurdist, "kaleidoscopic and surreal" black comedy that falls just short of magnificence, Burns' second novel is a twisting tale of violence and trauma in the small town of Tiptoe Floorboard told by an unnamed and highly unreliable narrator. Descending into the depths of this novel, which reads like a top spun at full speed, whirling and jumping from time and place, is rather like a trust fall. Fans of Milkman will recognize Burns' masterful prose, which will haunt and surprise you, though to be sure, do not pick this book up expecting the same experience as Milkman.

Little Constructions is a brilliantly dark and nuanced portrayal of abuse, memory, sexual trauma, and violence, framed against the backdrop of a gang-infested town where criminal and victim stand side by side. The story centers around the Doe family, nearly all of whom have names beginning with the letter J -- Jetty, Jotty, Janet, John, etc. The narrator observes this family over the course of decades, analyzing their thoughts and fears, traumas and neuroses, while skipping from character to character in an attempt to grasp what, exactly, is going on within the walls and minds of the family.

This book is an excellent example of a story in which structure and content work to compliment each other. The confusing elements of the book serve to heighten the feeling of speculation and rumor in a town where so much of common knowledge is hearsay or completely made up. Truly, it is a book about the social mindset required to coexist with violent, dysfunctional truths. As another reviewer brilliantly references, and Anna Burns herself stated:

"for me, it’s about the domestic madness and collusion of the family and associates of the insane leader of a murder gang. That could be any murder gang. What does their consciousness do with what it really knows all along but has to pretend to itself that it doesn’t know?"

In many ways I found Little Constructions to be a much more challenging read than Milkman and that is why I would hesitate to recommend it to anyone who struggled through Milkman. It is also not, I think, quite as tightly crafted as Milkman was. And yet, it seems clear that Burns had to write this book first, as there are multiple seeds and jumping off points that ultimately came to fruition in Milkman. Nonetheless, I still found Little Constructions to be an extraordinarily brilliant book, and one which I hope will receive the attention and the audience it deserves in the wake of Burns' Booker win.

[Spiros · Rating 3 out of 5]

A shambolic Jacobean drama of an Irish crime family, told by an omniscient but highly unreliable and unidentified narrator; the voice resembles that of a Jane Goodall, having to describe a particularly truculent troop of rogue chimpanzees. Besides the normal gangland activities of extortion and theft, the Does are given to rape, incest, and cannibalism, and are equally obsessed with self-help and occultism. Given the scattershot, stream-of-consciousness style of the narrator's voice, and the fact than all the Does seem to have the same names (even the bystanders, as in the two men named Tom, can be conflated), the story has the quality of a fever dream; basically, it's a surreal version of John Boorman's film, "The General".

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely bonkers in the best possible way.

It's the story of a tumultuous crime family, its bitter end, and the multi-generational wackiness that led up to everything falling apart. Burns creates a narrator that speaks in feverish footnotes, delirious details, and obsessive obfuscation. The writing crackles with intense and confusing energy in that, you really want to know what's happening to this deep cast of characters, but the intertwining lines between everyone would put a conspiracy theorist to shame.

The core events of the story - the destruction of the Doe Family and everything they'd built over the years - take place over maybe two days. But our manic narrator introduces you to everyone's innermost thoughts, neuroses, and crushing psychological issues. It reads like the worst sort of armchair psychology mixed with occult shenanigans - YET IT WORKS.

Burns flexes her capacity for deep storytelling and mythology, while also showcasing her ability to mine every possible avenue for context because the narrator compulsively needs you to know everything. The entire book feels like her personal confession about everything she's seen, heard, experienced, and intuited about her family over the course of her life, and this minutiae is somehow of the utmost importance.

Be prepared to pay very close attention, because nearly everyone has the surname of "Doe," and nearly everyone's first name begins with a "J." Ultimately, it reads like a very Irish combination of David Chase's The Sopranos, The Real Housewives series, and Alan Moore's Jerusalem.

[Lee Foust · Rating 4 out of 5]

While Anna Burns is probably my second favorite contemporary novelist (after Chris Kraus), I see why this, Burns's second novel, fell a bit through the cracks and has only been published (in the USA at least) now that her talent has been recognized by a Booker Prize for Milkman, her third novel. Thus this is a flawed work by an obviously very talented writer. The method here--endless meandering digression--only partially works. The narrative voice is very funny, so it's hard to criticize that voice's story-telling technique, as it seems inseparable from the narrative itself, but it's just gets too convoluted at times. A reader cannot help but lose the thread occasionally, give up on remembering which character is which, follow the meandering timeline, and not feel hopelessly at sea at times.

As usual for Burns, this is comedy out of the worst form of tragedy--mindless and seemingly gratuitous violence--this time out of organized crime rather than the Northern Irish "troubles" described so vividly in her other two novels (yet the violence of the crime family is hidden, as the narrator tells us early on, by the war zone in which it occurs). Here she also hilariously (and poignantly at the same time, a real triumph) takes on recovery culture, its books, therapy, and, mostly, the denial and resistance of those who need it most. Despite some difficulty, the novel is well worth a read--you will laugh, you will cry, even if you will also probably be a bit annoyed as well.