What an amazing book.
So recognizable and yet at times very strange. Not a very difficult read, but the many (pairs of) characters didn't leave any room to let my mind wander while reading. ( )

Ukraine after the Orange Revolution. Viktor Yushchenko is President and Viktor Yanukovych is Prime Minister. Yulia Tymoshenko is waiting in the wings. Corruption is the default position, selective naivety a way to survive. Irina is a single mother who sells the breast milk she should be feeding her daughter with in order to get by. Egor is a security guard who tries to extricate Irina from the bizarre breast milk supply chain she's unwittingly at the centre of. Dima is a sniffer dog handler at the airport who helps two baggage handlers steal a case full of drug ampoules that have an unusual effect on his cat and anyone the baggage handlers sell the drugs to. Semyon is a private security guard who works for an up and coming politician who employs unusual methods to stay looking young. Semyon sleepwalks and might be having a somnambulist affair with the witness to a murder. The murdered man was a pharmacist who was working on a drug to help keep politicians looking young and dynamic. The pharmacist's widow befriends Semyon's wife, and so Irina, Egor, Dima and Semyon are connected together. ( )

Kurkov writes a wonderful satire of corruption among politicians, priests, militia and security services in the Ukraine.

Dima, a sniffer dog-handler at the airport conspires with 2 bag-handlers to steal a suitcase, but they're not sure what to make of the contents when they finally get the suitcase open. Semyon, a security officer to a politician, realizes that he's been sleepwalking in the night but he can't remember where he goes or what he does during his nocturnal journeys. He's worried he may have murdered someone during one of his wanderings, and asks his friend to follow him if he sees him leaving his house at night. Irina is a wet nurse at a milk kitchen even as her own daughter is raised on formula at home. A woman whose pharmacist husband was murdered one night, is reluctant to let him go, and, together with a friend whose husband had also recently passed away, decide to have their deceased husbands embalmed so they can bring them home and have them sit in their armchairs. But how are the soles of the slippers of her dead husband getting dirty and why are there footprints in the carpet in her living room?

All these seemingly different stories are told in short segments very vividly, allowing the reader to follow along with their individual adventures, sorrows, frustration at life's challenges and also their joyous moments. There's a great deal of gentle humor with which the author sympathetically shares his characters with us, and it is this gentle telling of their stories that kept me riveted to the book.

Oh and by the way, there's also a vigilante seemingly immortal cat on the loose. ( )

I read this a couple of months ago, so the detail isn't quite fresh in my memory. Unlike the last Kurkov novel I read (The case of the General's Thumb), it has stronger female characters and an addition to the Kurkov menagerie that's well integrated into the plot, rather than present as an embellishment. Characteristically Kurkov, characteristically off-beat. ( )

I always feel a sense of loss when I have finished one of Kurkov's novels; I love reading them so much I don't want them to end and I find my self dissatisfied with the books on my to be read shelf - what can follow a fabulous Andrey Kurkov novel.
The Milkman in the Night is an optimistic and playful Kurkov novel. It is emotional and often bought a lump to my throat. There are the dark and strange goings on and murders, but the overwhelming feeling in this novel for me is one of happiness and love and optimism for the future of Ukraine.
Kurkov cleverly weaves connections between all the characters, Irina, her baby daughter and her mother in their village hut, Dima and Valya and their two cats and sleep-walking Semyon and Veronika all seem to live ordinary lives, but Kurkov weaves in to their lives tales of mystery pharmaceuticals, mysterious widows, wet nurses, cheese making enterprises, politics and red-headed psychologists. These tales are always amusing and touching and plausible, but only just.
He writes so brilliantly and clearly, it really is a joy to read his novels. If you've never read a Andrey Kurkov novel get out there and read one now. ( )