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Pity the Beast Audiobook
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Following in the footsteps of such chroniclers of American absurdity 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, sideways into legend, and off into a lonesome future.
Millennia ago, Ginny’s family ranch was all grass and rock and wild horses. A thousand years hence, it’ll all be peacefully underwater. In the matter-of-fact here and now, though, it’s a hotbed of lust and resentment, and about to turn ugly, because Ginny’s just cheated on her husband Dan with the man who lives next door.
Out on these prairies, word travels fast: everyone seems to know everyone’s business. They know what Ginny did, and they know Ginny isn’t sorry. She might not be proud of what she’s done, but she doesn’t regret it either. To be honest, she enjoyed the hell out of it, and as far as Ginny is concerned, that should be the end of the story. Problem is, no one else seems able to let it go. The community can’t bear to let a woman like Ginny off the hook. Not with an attitude like hers.
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 new voice 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.
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“Her characters…mostly they bicker, wisecrack, and daydream, their behavior—crude but engaging, and often even endearing—so grippingly at odds with their drift into savagery.””
— Wall Street Journal
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“Full of casually perfect writing, especially about animals and nature…a work of crazy brilliance.”
— The Guardian (London) -
“Wild, surprising, and not a little frightening…I find them full of vitality and wonder.”
— Paris Review -
“Dion Graham’s performance of this violent feminist survival story set in the American West is nothing short of incredible…Listeners will feel rewarded.”
— AudioFile -
“Moves through time, space, and myth in order to explore a larger philosophical canvas beyond the immediate drama.”
— Daily Mail (London) -
“Raw and elemental, searing yet wry, this has much to say on law and lawlessness, sexual politics, and humans’ animal nature.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“A brutally gorgeous fever dream of a novel.”
— Sabina Murray, author of The Human Zoo -
“A revenge narrative that never loses sight of the power of empathy.”
— Jim Shepard, author of The Book of Aron -
“Not since Faulkner have I read American prose so bristling with life and particularity.”
— J. M. Coetzee, Nobel Prize–winning author -
“A magnificent work of art by a fearless and utterly original writer. I read it with wonder and terror, exhilaration, and admiration.”
— Chris Bachelder, author of The Throwback Special -
“McLean writes scenes that feel as vibrant, terrifying, and wondrous as your most adrenalized memories.”
— Karen Russell, New York Times bestselling author
Awards
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A London Guardian Pick of the Day
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A New York Times Book Review pick of Best Books Now in Paperback
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About Robin McLean
Robin McLean worked as lawyer and then a potter for fifteen years in the woods of Alaska before receiving her MFA at UMass Amherst. Her story collection Reptile House won the 2013 BOA Editions Fiction Prize and was twice a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Short Story Prize.
About Dion Graham
Dion Graham is an award-winning narrator named a “Golden Voice” by AudioFile magazine. He has been a recipient of the prestigious Audie Award numerous times, as well as Earphones Awards, the Publishers Weekly Listen Up Awards, IBPA Ben Franklin Awards, and the ALA Odyssey Award. He was nominated in 2015 for a Voice Arts Award for Outstanding Narration. He is also a critically acclaimed actor who has performed on Broadway, off Broadway, internationally, in films, and in several hit television series. He is a graduate of Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts, with an MFA degree in acting.