The Restraint Of Beasts, the first novel by one-time London bus driver Magnus Mills, received a lot of attention when it was released in Britain: It was eventually nominated for the Booker Prize, the highest literary award in the land, and earned the not-insignificant praise of generally reticent (except when it comes to the band Lotion) author Thomas Pynchon. Reading it, it's little wonder why. The novel tells the story of three men who build high-tension fences meant to contain farm animals for a Scottish contracting firm. A business trip to England forces them to live in a grungy trailer, finding comfort only in routine trips to the local pub. Aside from the occasional accidental death of someone connected to their endeavors—deaths treated in the most matter-of-fact way possible—little happens to the workers outside of their job, which is precisely the point. Mills dwells on the mundane details of fence-building in a manner reminiscent of Melville's dwelling on the mundane details of whaling, but to considerably different effect. In place of the wide open seas and the shiftingly symbolic hunt of the great white whale, Mills places fences—increasingly complicated, increasingly effective, and increasingly demanding fences that prevent escape in more ways than one. Mills understands that hard labor gets turned into soul-crushing, dead-end work by the conditions around it and the petty tyrannies of those in command. In a subtle, darkly comic fashion, his novel portrays this for the everyday tragedy that it is, working its way to a haunting conclusion that sneaks up as the only possible outcome for what has come before it.