| Description |
1 online resource (1 audio file (11hr., 59 min.)) : digital. |
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digital digital recording rda |
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data file rda |
| Access |
Digital content provided by hoopla. |
| Performer |
Read by Dion Graham. |
| Summary |
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. "Not since Faulkner have I read American prose so bristling with life and particularity." "Robin McLean writes scenes that feel as vibrant, terrifying, and wondrous as your most adrenalized memories. Her country is never merely the backdrop for human dramas but a living, breathing entity, alive with the poetry of mules and skittering stone." "Raw and elemental, searing yet wry, this has much to say on law and lawlessness, sexual politics, and humans' animal nature." "Harrowing, gripping, the product of a deranged mind, Robin McLean's Pity the Beast is a brutally gorgeous fever dream of a novel. This metaphysical Western feels like something new." "A magnificent work of art by a fearless and utterly original writer. I read it with wonder and terror, exhilaration, and admiration." "A revenge narrative that never loses sight of the power of empathy, a love song to all of those animals domesticated for our support, a startlingly open-minded meditation on good and evil, a how-to manual on survival in the wilderness, a primer on how to negotiate all of the blind and ruthless violence we're forced to face in a world formed by trauma, and a passionate celebration of those small comforts that can and do get us through." |
| System Details |
Mode of access: World Wide Web. |
| Subject |
Married people -- Fiction.
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Ranchers -- Fiction.
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Adultery -- Fiction.
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Montana -- Fiction.
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| Genre |
Western stories.
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| Added Author |
Graham, Dion, narrator.
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hoopla digital.
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| ISBN |
9798200831357 (sound recording : hoopla Audio Book) |
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8200831353 (sound recording : hoopla Audio Book) |
| Music No. |
MWT15054337 |
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