An excellent short novel.
Although easy to read, this novel is set like lots of novels these days at different times, with the novel switching between them.
Part of the novel is set around the time when there were still coal mines, and miners.
The modern section is set with Alex's son, Simon, trying to express his opinions with a take-off of Margaret Thatcher.
The link between these two time periods are Alex and his brother Brian, and people from the college trying to examine the towns history in a different way.
A clever novel, which can be read in one session, it definitely gives the reader a feel of what life was back in the day, what it is like now, and how people are trying to come to terms with each.
Many thanks to the publisher for an advance copy for honest review.

Pity, a novel from the award-winning poet Andrew McMillan, is a thin book that contains multitudes. The prose, as expected, is beautiful.

It is set in a former mining town, and tells stories of the lives of one family and their relations, but is also the story of a place. It is fragmentary, elliptical, precise and full of beauty.

It is a novel to read slowly, yet it is a novel I devoured in one sitting. I'm from the North, I know this milleu, it's people, and I recognised so much in it. Yet I believe it will have universal appeal. It is an extremely beautiful debut.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

Very well written and incredibly poignant, a beautiful novel that demands attention. I really enjoyed this, I think it was one of a kind and brilliant.

A cleverly crafted, compact and compassionate novel of three generations of a Barnsley family, the grandfather having died in a fictionalised version of the 1975 Houghton Main Colliery Explosion and which both is, and is not, a tale of the town itself:

"We are certain that the story a place tells of itself should be more important than the story that is told about it, and that the weight of the latter in national narratives silences the former. One of our team speaks up from the back of the car and asks which ‘story the town might tell of itself’ do we really mean? Isn’t any attempt to coalesce or contain those narratives just another form of imposition? Anybody carving out small chunks of story from the wall of sound and noise and voice and memory is doing so selectively, and a small nugget of a larger thing should never be taken to be the thing itself."

This is the debut novel of Andrew McMillan – a Professor and lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University and an award winning poet (winner of the Guardian First Book Award with his debut collection, and the inaugural Polari Prize with is second and shortlisted for many other awards).

It is a novel which while much less confessional/personal than his poetry is firmly grounded in the author’s childhood town of Barnsley: a former mining town in South Yorkshire which voted nearly 70% Leave and parts of whose greater metropolitan area made up a fallen Red Wall seat. The author has said of the inspiration for the novel: “I remember one day, a couple of days after the Referendum, Channel 4 News went up to Barnsley to interview people but went to very particular places… where they knew they’d find people that would say things that would confirm the narrative that they’d already assumed,” he says. “So much of what I was hoping to do with the novel was just to ask the question—who gets to tell what story about what place? What narratives get known of a place?”

It is also one which features three male generations of a family: grandfather Brian; his sons Brian and Alex; and Alex’s son Simon (with Simon’s boyfriend Ryan – a security guard in a local shopping centre as he prepares to apply to the police – the other main character) – and a variety of styles and typefaces.

The elder Brian’s sections were those which draw the most on the author’s poetic background – a series of daily vignettes (the men leaving to go to the pit, the trip in the cage down to the coal face) leading up to a mining tragedy and with a series of fantastic similies (“more and more men fall out of their houses, like dominoes”), metaphors (“the weekend is still unshaven stubble in his mind”) and repeating motifs (what the men imagine of the coal, what awaits them a mile down).

A second set of sections are entitled “Fieldnotes” – written in first person plural by a small group of academic sociology experts who inspired by the work of Avery Gordon and others visit the town in order to try to understand more of its history and how that has impinged on the ability of the town’s present day inhabitants to tell their story – whether that is: the town’s 1997-98 year in the Premiership (one of the greatest in that competition’s history but where Barnsley were largely treated with condescension), the Public Hall disaster and how a town like Barnsley only makes the international news for “tragic or violent” reasons as happened in the 19th Century with the Hoyle Mill disaster, the Maurice Dobson museum, the Polyanna boutique and so on. They also work with a group of artists to help stage workshops to help the locals “rewrite local history and centre their own experiences” but realise that both “experts” and “artists” are not necessarily well regarded by the locals, eventually realising the potential contradiction in their work.

"We are certain that the story a place tells of itself should be more important than the story that is told about it, and that the weight of the latter in national narratives silences the former. One of our team speaks up from the back of the car and asks which ‘story the town might tell of itself’ do we really mean? Isn’t any attempt to coalesce or contain those narratives just another form of imposition? Anybody carving out small chunks of story from the wall of sound and noise and voice and memory is doing so selectively, and a small nugget of a larger thing should never be taken to be the thing itself. There is silence in the car; we seem to be in agreement."

Cleverly Brian the son (now himself an older man) is one of the few participants in their community workshops both challenging their assumptions but also being challenged by their suggestions. Even more cleverly one of the parts he gets most from is when a poet (unnamed but clearly I think the author) asks them to write in the voice of a local landmark – and Brian imagines being the Away Stand at Oakwell looking away from the big event of the match to simply view “a man and a dog” which the author (as his own character) seizes on as a metaphor for his workshop and of course at a meta-level the novel. And as the project closes Brian is not unimpacted by the way in which he has been allowed to find a voice.

A second set of separate sections are entitled “surveillance”: and split into “CCTV” where we learn of Ryan’s relationship with Simon and his various observations (many via CCTV footage - including his very first sighting of Simon); and “gossip” from the regulars at a club where many of the characters meet.

Simon’s sections and story were mixed for me – a call centre worker he supplements his wages via OnlyFans and by his Drag Act (Puttana Short Dress). The Only Fans part was for me unnecessarily explicit in detail – and cost the book the fifth star it deserves and the unreserved recommendation I would have liked to have given it. The Drag parts were a real highlight though – partly for the dynamics they lead to between Simon and Ryan (who is more than ambiguous about for example Simon wearing any drag outside the club) and Simon and Alex (whose surprising interest in seeing his son’s act speaks to a wider secret he has been keeping), but most of all for a more political version of his act that Simon plans: appearing dressed as Mrs. Thatcher (with the excellent slogan “this turn is not a lady”), and mixing Thatcher’s infamous Section 28 launching speech with a rendition of Mal Finch’s Miner Strike anthem “Women of the Working Class”.

Overall this is a very strong, cleverly political and innovative in form novel – one which is very likely to be in contention for prizes next year – including the Gordon Burn, Orwell and Goldsmiths Prizes.

My thanks to Canongate for an ARC via NetGalley

This was a very poignant novel, subtle but deep, sparse but full of meaning. I haven't read any of his poetry previously but I might go and look it out now!

The action is largely set in a shopping mall, a community center, and the streets of the formerly mining town, which I found to be a nuanced and poignant novel that did a great job of establishing the sense of place. Moving between the present and the past gave it a somewhat fragmentary tone, and the passages set in mine are incredibly poetic and sensuous. The reader is placed in a similar situation by the usage of the "Fieldnotes" sections to discuss the anthropological research carried out by the university in the village; we are uncomfortable observing the town's poverty in this somewhat clinical and voyeuristic manner. The references to Michael Gove and Grinder give the book a contemporary, urgent tone. In some respects, the portrayal of neglected landscapes and the frail young men attempting to navigate them brought to mind Ocean Vyoung's or Shuggie Bain's novels. Pity is an evocative, beautiful book about what we carry forward and what we leave behind, written in a way that only a poet of Andrew's caliber is capable of. The book's brief length belies its limitless depths and delights; it is only nominally a debut.

I am a huge fan of Andrew's poetry and so I knew I had to request this title ASAP. I wasn't disappointed, as the prose here carries the same finesse of language, alongside a deep, loving understanding for the people and history of the working-class milieu of its characters.

I thought this was a subtle and moving novel that created the sense of place very well, locating much of the action in a shopping centre, in a community centre and in the streets of the former mining town. It had a somewhat fragmentary style as it moved between the present and the past and the sections set in mine are very poetic and sensory. The use of the 'Fieldnotes' sections to describe the anthropological research done by the university in the town puts the reader in an analogous position, we feel uncomfortable viewing the poverty of the town in this somewhat clinical and voyeuristic way. The novel also feels modern and urgent with the references to Michael Gove and Grinder. In some ways it reminded me of Ocean Vyoung's novel or of Shuggie Bain in the description of neglected landscapes and fragile young men trying to navigate them.

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 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.