An empathetic portrait of a misunderstood community, Andrew McMillan’s debut novel Pity tells the story of a shopping centre security guard and a call centre employee with two very contemporary side hustles: drag and OnlyFans
NL: Simon wrestles with the idea of sending up Thatcher in his drag show because it could look like a cliché from someone in a former mining town. Did you also have this internal dilemma when it came to discussing Thatcher in the novel? AM: Yeah, and I’m willing for that to be levelled at it – “oh, it’s a novel set in Barnsley; of course it’s about mining and the pits.“ But I was thinking a lot about the idea of cliché when I was writing this novel.
When I became aware of Section 28 retroactively, suddenly everything made sense in terms of how I moved through school. When I was in year ten, I went to lunch and left my phone in the classroom – there were no locks in those days, so somebody read these quite explicit text messages I’d been sending to a lad my age. When I came back, it became obvious everyone had read the messages and I remember breaking down crying. I was a nerdy student, but for the first time ever I refused to go to class.