The Restraint of Beasts is a tragicomic debut novel

Debut novel

A debut novel is the first novel an author publishes. Debut novels are the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry, and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to publish in the future...

, written by Magnus Mills

Magnus Mills

- Background :Magnus Mills was born in Birmingham and brought up in Bristol. After graduating with an economics degree from Wolverhampton Polytechnic, he started a masters degree at the University of Warwick but dropped out before completion....

. In it, an anonymous narrator 'the foreman' works for a Scottish fencing company, run by Donald who is consumed by work and the desire for 'efficiency'. The narrator is promoted to foreman and put in charge of Tam and Richie who prefer a 'Laissez-Faire' approach to work and so are at odds with both their management and their new foreman.

Mills' deadpan narrative voice is at times either revealing or naive, and both these interpretations of the narrator are supported throughout the text- it is up to the reader to decide where the narrator is ironic or genuinely emoting.

Plot introduction

The novel starts with a phone call, "Mr McCrindle's fence has gone slack", and sees the three main characters duly dispatched to the scene of Tam and Richie's previous job, which they have left in a hurry. The ensuing Kafkaesque incidents set the tone for the rest of the novel, where Tam, Richie, and the narrator find themselves 'sent off' to England in work-related 'exile'.

Major themes

The Restraint of Beasts exhibits many issues and themes, most prominently that of work. Donald's drive for 'efficiency' can be seen as thinly veiled fascism, whilst the 'instability of three' deals with the balance of power between the narrator, Tam and Richie. Since the narrator is a newly-appointed 'foreman' and cannot impose his will on either Tam or Richie he tries to reason with them: 'We'd better have a go at getting this lot sorted out then'. This results in a management style that conflicts with Donald, as obeying Donald implicitly is impractical: 'it was clear that I would have to ignore unilaterally Donald's driving ban if we were going to get anything done at all'. The theme of work as a domineering force in the lives of workers is prevalent throughout the novel, and is seen when the characters go back to Scotland from Mr Perkins’s farm in England - Richie is confronted by the realisation that his boss Donald has implied to his mother that Richie was 'not coming back' and so the electric guitar Richie had his parents paying instalments on while he was away has been repossessed.

Awards and nominations

The Restraint of Beasts won the McKitterick Prize

McKitterick Prize

The McKitterick Prize is a United Kingdom literary prize. It is administered by the Society of Authors. It was endowed by Tom McKitterick, who had been an editor of The Political Quarterly but had also written a novel which was never published. The prize is awarded annually for a first novel by...

 for 1999. It was nominated for the Booker prize

Man Booker Prize

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and...

 and the Whitbread first novel award for 1999, and was also praised by the (usually reclusive) author Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...

 as 'A demented, deadpan comic wonder'.

Adaptations

In 2006, Pawel Pawlikowski

Pawel Pawlikowski

Paweł Pawlikowski is a Polish-born, Oxford-based, BAFTA Award-winning filmmaker and academic. He garnered much acclaim for his BAFTA Award-winning Last Resort which he wrote and directed in 2000 and My Summer of Love, loosely based on Helen Cross' novel, which also won a BAFTA and a string of...

 directed a film adaptation starring Rhys Ifans

Rhys Ifans

Rhys Ifans is a Welsh actor and musician. He is known for his portrayal of characters such as Spike in Notting Hill and Jed Parry in Enduring Love and as a member of the Welsh rock groups Super Furry Animals and The Peth. Ifans also appeared as Xenophilius Lovegood in Harry Potter and the Deathly...

, Ben Whishaw

Ben Whishaw

Benjamin John "Ben" Whishaw is an English actor who trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Whishaw is perhaps best known for his breakthrough role as Hamlet, and his role as the lead character in Tom Tykwer's film Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.-Early life:Whishaw was born and raised in...

, Eddie Marsan

Eddie Marsan

Edward Maurice C. "Eddie" Marsan is an English actor.-Early life:Marsan was born in Stepney, London to a working class family; his father was a lorry driver and his mother a school dinner lady and teacher's assistant...

, and Warren Clarke

Warren Clarke

-Biography:Clarke was born in Oldham, Lancashire. His first television appearance was in the long running Granada soap opera Coronation Street, initially as Kenny Pickup in 1966 and then as Gary Bailey in 1968. His first major film appearance was in Stanley Kubrick's controversial A Clockwork...

but it was suspended in mid-production when the director's wife fell seriously ill and passed away. In 2010, he said "We'd shot 60% of the film when I had to stop. The material looks great, like nothing I've ever done or even seen before. It could have been really great, definitely original."