The absence of politics in Milkman

At about the 2/3 point in Anna Burns's novel Milkman (2018), at which point the (unnamed) narrator, who has spent an evening the most popular local bar-nightclub getting upbraided by her "longest friend" for her weird and antisocial behavior and for her rumored attachment to the IRA leader Milkman, gets poisoned by the troubled young woman known as "Tablets" for her propensity to drop tablets of poison into the drinks of the unwary; it's kind of weird that she's able to do so when literally everyone in the club knows who she is and know she's walked into the club and everyone is warned and on guard, but that's only one of the many oddities in this strange novel. In any event, the narrator is severely poisoned, which leads to her mother assembling a group of women from the "area" (i.e., neighborhood; in this portrayal of a North Ireland town/city in the 70s every neighborhood is clearly delineated by its religion) who sit in a kind of council over the narrator, debating how to purge her of the poison. Taking her to the hospital is out of the question, as it's widely believed that anyone who goes there will be coerced into becoming an informer - an in particular they believe the narrator is vulnerable because of her alleged (and incorrect) ties to Milkman. After a harrowing description of her purging, she wakes up and is consoled by her three younger - and hilariously precocious - "wee sisters," who describe to her the night's events. There's a sense that this brush with death and purging of her entire system may serve as a symbol - that perhaps the narrator comes out on the other side of this with a "clean" slate or reputation; she does seem to have a stronger, better relationship w/ her mother, who up to this point in the novel has been mainly a fount of criticism. This episode is also yet another reminder of and account of the omnipresence of death and violence and the strict division of society by class and religious affiliation, to no apparent end - as noted previously, the absence of any discussion of politics or end goals is a striking feature of this novel: The divisions that wrack the culture appear as existential facts rather than as temporal or social convictions and conditions.