Award-winning poet Andrew McMillan’s first novel takes place in a world immediately recognisable from his three collections of poetry – Physical, Playtime and Pandemonium. It is set in his native Barnsley, a town still living in the shadow of the destruction of its mining industry and the after-effects of Thatcherism.
Pity’s protagonist, Simon, is a sometime drag artist and online sex worker whose key relationships are strained: his love interest, Ryan, hoping to become a policeman, has mixed feelings about the performative aspects of Simon’s life while his father, Alex, is stymied by trying to prevent his son from discovering his own, secret, gay encounters. The chief plot driver is Simon’s plan to develop and stage a drag show in which he’ll dress up as Thatcher, hoping to make a local audience see both itself, and Thatcher’s own use of gendered image-making, anew.
