A review by motherbooker
Pity by Andrew McMillan

4.0

Set in the former mining town of Barnsley, Pity tells the story of three generations of a mining family. Though it haunts this book, it isn't a story about mining. Instead, it explores masculinity and sexual identity. This is also the story of how recent political history has impacted working-class towns. Though we don't actually see any of the miners' strikes of the 1980s, you can feel the fallout. Alex and his brother Brian are the sons of a miner and followed him into the business. The miners' strike had a huge impact on their family and is still felt by Alex's son, Simon. He might not be old enough to have experienced the consequences of Thatcher's government first-hand but he understands how much it hurt. It's brilliant how Andrew McMillan weaves history into the narrative without writing a book about the miners' strike.

Considering how short this book is, it's very ambitious. It follows multiple perspectives and spans decades. Opening in the 1970s, we meet Alex as he settles on his family's sofa with a pornographic magazine. For the rest of the book, we split between a cast of characters. There's Alex; his brother, Brian; his son Simon; Simon's boyfriend, Ryan; and a group of academics doing research in the town. In between these chapters, there are also more lyrical sections looking through the eyes of a miner. With repeated phrases and a focus on sensory language, the chapters read like poetry and cut through the rest of the book. They capture the rhythm and repetitiveness of a group of men heading to the mines and getting stuck into back-breaking labour. It's all building to something awful but we just have to sit back and wait for it to happen.

The majority of the novel is set in the present day. Simon, a drag queen, prepares for a performance taking down Margaret Thatcher. It's different for him but he is passionate about the show. He wants to use his art to convey the feelings of the community. It's what he wants to do more of even if his boyfriend isn't so keen. Ryan works as security at the local shopping centre and dreams of being a police officer. So, he isn't always as quick to embrace the queer community as Simon. He is used to watching other people and is always worried about what people will see him doing. So, having a boyfriend with an OnlyFans account isn't quite what he signed up for. There are several representations of gay experience within this book that show how different life has been and can be.
 

Pity is a book that is majorly concerned with what you keep hidden and what you show. It's about covering and uncovering aspects of your life. Ryan watches while Simon shows. It shows a very different experience for the two young men. Ryan is out but he's not completely comfortable. He has something in common with the gay experience of the past when men were forced into the shadows. Hiding isn't just something that we associate with being gay. We see that Brian, Simon's uncle, is hiding his emotions. Brian attends the workshops hosted by the academics out of boredom but he quickly finds himself having to come to terms with the feelings he's long left buried. A family tragedy that he has been running from is threatening to come back to the surface.

This is an absolutely beautiful book that really taps into some important themes. It captures the experience of men, both gay and straight, in a Northern town. These men are expected to act a certain way and it has caused generations of emotional trauma and secrets. These are people who weren't able to confront their traumas because they had to move on with their lives. Giving up and grieving wasn't an option. ITolive, they needed to keep going no matter what. The only problem with pushing everything down is that it keeps bubbling away under the surface. The pits may close but that doesn't mean they disappear. There is still plenty of evidence of that history to be seen if you look closely. As Brian puts it "Pits close: we still sink into them".