Following in the footsteps of such chroniclers of American absurdity as Cormac McCarthy, Joy Williams, and Charles Portis, Robin McLean's Pity the Beast is a mind-melting feminist Western that pins a tale of sexual violence and vengeance to a canvas stretching back to prehistory, sideways into legend, and off into a lonesome future.Millennia ago, Ginny's family ranch was all grass and rock and wild horses. A thousand years hence, it'll all be peacefully underwater. In the matter-of-fact here and now, though, it's a hotbed of lust and resentment, and about to turn ugly, because Ginny's just cheated on her husband Dan with the man who lives next door.
Out on these prairies, word travels fast: everyone seems to know everyone's business. They know what Ginny did, and they know Ginny isn't sorry. She might not be proud of what she's done, but she doesn't regret it either. To be honest, she enjoyed the hell out of it, and as far as Ginny is concerned, that should be the end of the story. Problem is, no one else seems able to let it go. The community can't bear to let a woman like Ginny off the hook. Not with an attitude like hers.
With detours through time, space, and myth, not to mention into the minds of a pack of philosophical mules, Pity the Beast heralds the arrival of a major new voice in American letters. It is a novel that turns our assumptions about the West, masculinity, good and evil, and the very nature of storytelling onto their heads, with an eye to the cosmic as well as the comic. It urges us to write our stories anew if we want to avoid becoming beasts ourselves.
About the Author
Robin McLean worked as a lawyer and then a potter in the woods of Alaska before turning to writing. Her story collection Reptile House won the 2013 BOA Editions Fiction Prize and was twice a finalist for the Flannery O'Connor Short Story Prize. She now lives and teaches in the high plains desert of central Nevada at Ike's Canyon Ranch Writer's Retreat, which she co-founded.
Industry Reviews
'[Pity the Beast is] full of casually perfect writing, especially about animals and nature . . . The crux of this review is that Pity the Beast is a work of crazy brilliance. It's a worthy successor to William Faulkner and Toni Morrison, and the rare book that creates more space for later writers to work in.' Sandra Newman, The Guardian (Book of the Day) ---- '[Pity the Beast's] ambitious and innovative narrative moves through time, space and myth in order to explore a larger philosophical canvas beyond the immediate drama.' Fanny Blake, Daily Mail ---- 'Promotional material has likened Pity the Beast to Cormac McCarthy and there is a resemblance, particularly with the Judge's insane pursuit of the Kid in Blood Meridian. But where Mr. McCarthy is grandiose and portentous, Ms. McLean is strikingly down-to-earth. Her characters may amuse themselves with flights of philosophizing, but mostly they bicker, wisecrack and daydream, their behavior-crude but engaging, and often even endearing-so grippingly at odds with their drift into savagery. It sounds impossible but for all its horrors, there is little that is lurid about the writing in Pity the Beast. I have never read a book that made evil seem so natural-which is both the most unsettling thing about this novel and its greatest accomplishment.' Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal ---- 'A category-defying novel of revenge, survival, and transcendence . . . Raw and elemental, searing yet wry, this has much to say on law and lawlessness, sexual politics, and humans' animal nature.' Publishers Weekly ---- 'Ambitious, inventive.' Kirkus Review ---- 'Not since Faulkner have I read American prose so bristling with life and particularity.' J M Coetzee----'Pity is in short supply in Pity the Beast, but compassion is not: set in the kind of country in which ploughs break against hidden rocks and running water is a girl sprinting with a bucket, it's a revenge narrative that never loses sight of the power of empathy, a love song to all of those animals domesticated for our support, a startlingly open-minded meditation on good and evil, a how-to manual on survival in the wilderness, a primer on how to negotiate all of the blind and ruthless violence we're forced to face in a world formed by trauma, and a passionate celebration of those small comforts that can and do get us through.' Jim Shepard----'Mythic in scope and vision, ingenious in form and style, Pity the Beast is a magnificent work of art by a fearless and utterly original writer. I read it with wonder and terror, exhilaration and admiration.' Chris Bachelder----'Robin McLean's gonna get you. She will take you out into deep, and then deeper, water.' Noy Holland, author of Spectacle of the Body and I Was Trying to Discover What It Feels Like----'Robin McLean sees the world like no one I've ever read before. In PITY THE BEAST, her exacting eye gives us human behavior in all of its beastliness while simultaneously reminding us that it's not moral judgment that ugliness calls for, it's even more careful attention. McLean insists that if we face the worst of ourselves, and if we find some way to articulate what we see, we may emerge battered but filled with a compassion we didn't know we had, and didn't know we needed.' Karen Shepard, author of An Empire of Women and What Have We Done----'Robin McLean writes scenes that feel as vibrant, terrifying, and wondrous as your most adrenalized memories. Her country is never merely the backdrop for human dramas but a living, breathing entity, alive with the poetry of mules and skittering stone. "Pity the Beast" is a thrilling ride and McLean's world feels so real that every cloud and creature in it casts a shadow.' Karen Russell, author of St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, Swamplandia! and Orange World and Other Stories----'Harrowing, gripping, the product of a deranged mind, Robin McLean's Pity the Beast is a brutally gorgeous fever-dream of a novel. This metaphysical Western feels like something new.' Sabina Murray, author of The Human Zoo and Valiant Gentlemen----'Not since I stood in a Washington D.C. bookstore back in 1992 to read the first few pages of All the Pretty Horses, have I known so quickly and surely that I was in the hands of a writer whose skills and sensibilities soared in a direction both thrilling and foreign to me at the same time. But where Cormac McCarthy uses his gifts to solidify the west we have always known - men on the edge, defining and redefining freedom - Robin McLean turns the tables on him (and us) by putting a woman in charge. Though Pity the Beast is, through and through, a feminist novel, however, there isn't a sentence in it that preaches, not a word that calls attention to its political undercurrents. Robin McLean may be a literary newcomer, but in years to come we might be calling her a literary master.' Richard Wiley, author of Soldiers in Hiding
