Description
Book SynopsisA SUNDAY TIMES BEST BOOK OF 2024
A BBC MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2024
AN INDEPENDENT BEST FICTION TO READ IN 2024
A NEW STATESMAN FICTION HIGHLIGHT OF 2024
A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2024
AN i-D FICTION HIGHLIGHT TO BE EXCITED FOR IN 2024
'A deeply felt and rich enactment of love, loneliness and personal triumph that leaves an indelible mark on modern Queer life' OCEAN VUONG
The town was once a hub of industry. A place where men toiled underground in darkness, picking and shovelling in the dust and the sleck. It was dangerous and back-breaking work but it meant something. Once, the town provided, it was important; it had purpose. But what is it now?
Brothers Alex and Brian have spent their whole life in the town where their father lived and his father, too. Now in his middle age and still reeling from the collapse of his personal life, Alex must reckon with a part of his identity he has long tried to conceal. His only child Simon has no memory of the mines. Now in his twenties and working in a call centre, he derives passion from his side hustle in sex work and his weekly drag gigs.
Set across three generations of South Yorkshire mining family, Andrew McMillan's magnificent debut novel is a lament for a lost way of life as well as a celebration of resilience and the possibility for change.
Trade ReviewTender and true. It explores with brilliance and deep empathy how our lives - and our secrets - are always intertwined with those who went before us -- DOUGLAS STUART
The poet's deft first novel conveys the personal and political pain felt by three generations in his home town . . . This is not a novel specifically about the strike and its outcome, although its embittered legacy is skilfully threaded through its pages . . . the narrative is impressively ambitious . . . a novel of huge compassion * * Guardian * *
A deeply felt and rich enactment of love, loneliness and personal triumph that leaves an indelible mark on modern Queer life. With the poet's precision and capacious resistance to resolution, wherein doubt is transformed into force, McMillan's first foray into fiction is a magical one -- OCEAN VUONG
We already knew that Andrew McMillan could turn a phrase. With his debut novel, he also shows us a rare gift for storytelling.
Pity digs deep into the heart and history of South Yorkshire and brings out the black gold of love, longing and loss. A triumph -- JON McGREGOR
Pity pays a great poet's tough but tender attention to the unspoken layers and historic fissures which lie beneath the wounded town of the self. This beautiful book about the marks that are left on people and places in turn leaves a deep empathic mark on the reader -- MAX PORTER
A magnificent kaleidoscope of a novel: sad, wise, enlightening and empathetic * * Independent * *
Pity is as tough, glittering and multilayered as the coal upon which it rests. With lyrical prose and deep tenderness, Andrew McMillan beautifully explores the complex hauntings of love and grief across generations -- LIZ BERRY
Beautiful, sparing and impassioned . . . [a] tender exploration of the ties that bind generations * * Literary Review * *
Full of intrigue . . . McMillan displays his poet's knack for linguistic playfulness * * New Statesman * *
McMillan's writing is at its most powerful . . . he fearlessly explores masculinity and desire . . . bringing to the novel the clarity and economy of a poet who looks unflinchingly at life and longing, sex and angst, the sparseness and vividness of his prose clothes the bare political bones of this raging lament. Nor is he sentimental. There is honesty, and occasionally humour in his depiction of the town and its inhabitants, his loose ends and unresolved
problems a mirror of life. A slim but potent tale
* * Herald * *
