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Pity the Beast
A brutalized woman is left for dead. But dead is the one thing she isn’t. With a stolen horse and rifle, she escapes into the mountains, and a small posse of her tormentors has to gear up and give chase—whether to beg forgiveness or shut her up for good, nobody knows.
With detours through time, space and myth—not to mention into the minds of a pack of philosophical mules—Pity the Beast is a mind-melting feminist Western that pins a tale of sexual violence and vengeance to a canvas as wide and strange as America itself. It’s 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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Pity the Beast
A brutalized woman is left for dead. But dead is the one thing she isn’t. With a stolen horse and rifle, she escapes into the mountains, and a small posse of her tormentors has to gear up and give chase—whether to beg forgiveness or shut her up for good, nobody knows.
With detours through time, space and myth—not to mention into the minds of a pack of philosophical mules—Pity the Beast is a mind-melting feminist Western that pins a tale of sexual violence and vengeance to a canvas as wide and strange as America itself. It’s 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.
A brutalized woman is left for dead. But dead is the one thing she isn’t. With a stolen horse and rifle, she escapes into the mountains, and a small posse of her tormentors has to gear up and give chase—whether to beg forgiveness or shut her up for good, nobody knows.
With detours through time, space and myth—not to mention into the minds of a pack of philosophical mules—Pity the Beast is a mind-melting feminist Western that pins a tale of sexual violence and vengeance to a canvas as wide and strange as America itself. It’s 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.
Robin McLean worked as a lawyer and then a potter in the woods of Alaska before turning to writing. 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. Her debut novel Pity the Beast was chosen in multiple Best Books of 2021 lists in outlets such as the Guardian, Wall Street Journal and White Review, while the American Booksellers Association chose it as an Indie Next pick. She now lives and teaches in the high plains desert of central Nevada at Ike's Canyon Ranch Writer's Retreat, which she co-founded.
Read an Excerpt
“You should put your hands on me. Like you did him.” He wrapped his legs around her legs, his arms around her middle. He sniffed her neck. “For peace again.” “Soon,” she said. “Give me time.” He rocked her on the edge and she let him. “A horse has the largest eye of any land mammal.” “You’ve told me.” “People think of lions and elephants. People overflow with mistakes and blunders.” “I know, I know,” She pried his arms off. But gentle. “Let’s get on back.”
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