Pity by Andrew McMillan

Pre-Order Publishes in Paperback 13th February 2025
 
The debut novel from award-winning poet Andrew McMillan exploring community, masculinity and post-industrialisation in Northern England
 
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.
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'A deeply felt and rich enactment of love, loneliness and personal triumph that leaves an indelible mark on modern Queer life' Ocean Vuong
'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
'McMillan proves himself a gifted storyteller'-Jackie Kay The Times