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. Still reeling from the collapse of his personal life, Alex, is now in his middle age, and must reckon with a part of his identity he has long tried to mask. Simon is the only child of Alex and had practically 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 short and magnificent debut novel is a lament for a lost way of a life as well as a celebration of resilience and the possibility for change.
Tender 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 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 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 Truly stunning. A novel that deals with the ways history intervenes in our lives and how we can use our lives to intervene in history. South Yorkshire is a crucible -- HELEN MORT Moving and resilient, Pity explores queer life in a northern English town in a way that is immediately recognisable, full of wounds, history and possibility. Written with the scope and precision that characterises all of McMillan's work, this is a lightning bolt of a book -- SEÀN HEWITT In supple, honest prose, Pity questions how we can bear the weight of what came before us. Through an acute exploration of social class, masculinity, sexuality and resistance, McMillan deftly portrays a town grappling with loss amid its post-industrial legacy, while offering a hopeful vision of what the future could look like, if we were given the power to redefine our histories and tell our stories on our own terms -- JESSICA ANDREWS Written with the kind of concise and impactful writing only a poet of Andrew's level can wield, Pity is an evocative, brilliant book about what we leave behind and what we carry forward. Its short length belies its endless depths and delights; this is a debut in name only -- KASIM ALI
Author
About Andrew McMillan
Andrew McMillan was born in South Yorkshire in 1988; his debut collection physical was the first ever poetry collection to win The Guardian First Book Award. The collection also won the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, and was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. It was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Autumn 2015. In 2014 he received a substantial Northern Writers' Award. He currently lectures in Creative Writing at Liverpool John Moores University and lives in Manchester.
