No Bones was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. The two previous books – No Bones and Little Constructions – did well. It sounds like the child setting the tone for the adult writer, the unexpected given proximity.
She speaks of an attempt as a child to write an “Enid Blyton-meets-Agatha-Christie-meets-Russian-fairytale” type of book. There was reading in those Belfast days but no writing. I remember thinking, but how did that writer do that? How did he do that?" At one point I read something and stood still in amazement. (Like the narrator of Milkman Anna, Burns read as she walked.) "Most of the lampposts were broken and it was dark but it was a good book. She describes walking home at night along the Berwick road in Ardoyne, you're guessing mid-'70s, a bit tipsy and getting the novel she was reading out of her pocket. She elides and gilds the question, turns it in on itself and hands you back something glittering and strange. When Burns is asked a question about early years in Belfast you don’t get a biography. Anna Burns, author of Man Booker Prize nominated Milkman, belongs to that elite. You think back to figures like painter Dermot Seymour, the way he got it years before anyone else, what was comic and sinister, juxtapositions that deepen the mystery. An uncovering going on which is good to see, writers (Wendy Erskine, Michael Hughes) getting a hold of things in a way only a few managed before. The imagination getting hold of the moral compass and setting it aspin.
There's a shift in fiction coming out of the North.
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