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.
