Pity by Andrew McMillan
The legacies of a small mining community take centre stage in this remarkable, intergenerational debut novel
Every so often you can tell from the first page you are about to read something special. The opening chapter of Andrew McMillan’s debut novel Pity reads like one of the very best short stories, capturing in one brief but formative encounter the relationship between brothers Alex and Brian with an honesty and elegance which is rare, and this prepares readers as to what will follow. Set across three generations of men from the same South Yorkshire family, Pity examines complex issues of masculinity and identity, as well as what makes, and can almost break, a community.
In this case the community is one once defined by mining, and now by its absence. There are chapters depicting the harsh realities of working down pits, and they seem centuries away from Alex’s son Simon’s life of CCTV, camera phones, and OnlyFans, rather than in the living memory of many. If a phrase can be said to define a time, then Margaret Thatcher’s infamous claim that ‘There is no such thing as society’ could certainly be said to do so; its legacy is the ghost behind these stories, (the woman herself plays an unlikely role in proceedings) with the politics, the past, and present, all intimately entwined. But it’s love which runs through Pity, for both people and place. Andrew McMillan has written a novel which is artful, personal, and at times simply beautiful.
