posted on 02 Mar 2025

Pity by Andrew McMillan

Pity is poet Andrew McMillan’s first novel and, like his poetry collections, it’s a book that puts sexuality and identity in post-industrial Northern England slap in the middle of the mix. The skilfully designed jacket of the hardback will leave you in no doubt however that the other key ingredient in the book is the looming spectre of the 1984-5 miner’s strike.

McMillan’s story of three generations of men from the same family is set in or near Barnsley which is McMillan’s home town – so the impact of the strike is a legacy he should be well placed to try and understand. While he’s not writing a book explicitly about the strike, the ghostly after-wash of its effects on the community refuse to go away.

Although we first meet brothers Alex and Brian as teenagers, after the first chapter we see them as middle-aged and, in their own ways, unhappy with their lives. We also discover that Alex now has a son, Simon, who is in his twenties and is unapologetically gay and a drag queen. Simon has a new boyfriend, Ryan, who is often uncomfortable with Simon’s drag act and his penchant for using him in his explicit sex shows he films for broadcasting online.

Simon has the chance to develop a new act in which he conjures the persona of Margaret Thatcher and to perform it in his local Barnsley club rather than in Sheffield where he’s usually booked to appear. This also happens to be the same place where his now divorced father goes to drink and which has retained the atmosphere of the old workingman’s club.

Meanwhile, in an adjacent storyline, Brian is drawn into a project constructed by a team of university academics who are trying to capture the residual thoughts and feelings of how the community perceived and coped with the effects of the strike. He’s initially puzzled by what they want but slowly finds himself becoming more eloquent and eager to tell his truths.

And the telling of truths is really the nucleus of the book. Playing parts, denying your true identity (as Alex is reluctant to acknowledge his own sexuality) and confronting the past are all significant and important ghosts in the lives of the men here who are trying to find what’s left now that the ‘traditional’ male roles seem to have vanished for good.

I mentioned at the outset that McMillan was first and foremost a poet and throughout the book he uses a sort of prose poetry to evoke the ghosts of the men taking the trip for the start and end of their shifts in the pit – almost as if the past was so enormous that it’s permanently imprinted on the town and its surroundings – rather like a stone tape.

This feels like a deeply personal novel for the author and that emotion comes through strongly – but I’m not sure that he quite yet has a novelist’s eye for structure and pace, both of which feel slightly out of shape here. But he doesn’t overstay his welcome, which is always to be welcomed, and the poet’s ear for language is always delightful.

The book is easily available in both paper and hardback and you won’t pay more than £10 for either.

 

Terry Potter

March 2025