RaveRain TaxiExceptional books transcend the usual categories. Is Robin McLean’s Pity the Beast a modern-day western? Is it feminist? Is it postmodern? In fact it is all of these, and yet to pigeonhole it in such terms is reductive, and might, unfortunately, lead a reader to miss the complexity and richness of the novel ... The most outstanding feature of Pity the Beast, however, is the language ... This book is Hobbesian, bleak in vision, and if it’s not perfect, that’s because of its vast ambition. McLean is an important writer, one of the few who really matter at this precarious time in human history. She dares to think for herself, and to see things as they are, no matter how frightening that vision is.
