Pity the Beast

By: Robin McLean

Narrated by: Dion Graham

"I haven't read a book this dark and frank and sublimely written in a while. Maybe since Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men." (Alden Jones)

Following in the footsteps of such chroniclers of American lunacy 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.

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 force 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.

©2021 Robin McLean (P)2021 Blackstone Publishing

Beautiful and incoherent

There is a beautiful rhythm to this book, it feels original and colourful. It is so full or characters and shifting perspectives and time that it seems it struggle to contain. I wanted to love it and at moments i did, but it was exhausting trying to keep up and i lost track of who was speaking or what was happening at times. I found it impossible to concentrate constantly, which i thought would be necessary to truly appreciate this book. Even when it was very annoying, it was beautiful enough to stick with it. I lts just not very reader-friendly. Definitely notable, just wish it was somehow … less. Wonderful narration.

Loved It!

Back in 2016, I read Robin McLean’s book of short stories, Reptile House, and fell in love with her writing style, unfiltered, edgy with a purpose, and funny. Robin’s writing reflects the fact that she has lived in the kind of rural places that require a keen awareness of one’s surroundings. You can feel this in her work, where such an awareness results in writing with a razor’s edge.

For me, I appreciate this style of writing. It’s why I read, to be exposed to people, places, and ways of thinking I’d otherwise never experience That’s what Pity the Beast is, a world I’d otherwise never see.

Though the story is classified as a Western, I view it more like a story about the relationship between people and each other, people and animals, and people and the land. In order to explore these three relations, it makes sense to place these characters in a rural setting, and ultimately, the American West.

Pity the Beast is far from a “feel good” story. At its heart, the story explores the fine line between good and bad in people. And though serious to its core, there is a lot of wry humor throughout, especially male cowboy humor. My favorite character, Granny, also has a lot of dry wit, and uses it to deliver her own bits of wisdom throughout the story.

Without a doubt, this book has a strong sense of place and characters, a strong story arc and plot, and Robin uses every word available to her when describing the range of emotions her characters feel. I definitely felt like I was right with these people, and cringed at the choices they made. And while this is ultimately a simple “chase” story. In the end, defining the beast is not so simple. In the end, Robin challenges the reader to understand how the beast is in all of us.

first of all speed up the narration to about 1.5 s

so the first time I tried to listen to this and by the way I'm only on chapter 2 I just want it to give a review because I almost returned this book moving forward I started the book over I sped up the narration to 1.5 and now it's great or it's a little bit better to understand it was way too slow for me in the beginning and I had mine set on one point zero the narrator is amazing I have listened to him throughout several different genres and this is a new one for me and so I do want to see what Mr Dion Graham has in store I plan on giving an update when I actually finish the book