Breakfast on Pluto [Hardcover]

Patrick McCabe hit paydirt with his third novel The Butcher Boy, shortlisted for the 1992 Booker, filmed by Neil Jordan, and acclaimed as "a masterpiece of literary ventriloquism". In his fifth, Breakfast on Pluto, also Booker-shortlisted, McCabe produces another inimitable voice to amuse and infuriate; ventriloquising perfectly the overwrought, near-hysterical style of a character whose emotional processes were cruelly halted somewhere around the fourth form, and whose tale requires English literature's highest concentration of exclamation marks.

Patrick "Pussy" Brady is recording her memoirs for the mysterious Dr Terence, and it's quite some story. After randy Father Bernard gets carried away with his temporary housekeeper, a dead ringer for Mitzi Gaynor, the result is Patrick Braden, abandoned on a doorstep in a Rinso box and condemned to a foster home with the alcoholic Hairy Braden. Escape comes in fantasies of Vic Damone and the occasional glitzy frock, and eventually, inevitably, the rebaptised "Pussy" heads for life as a transvestite rent boy on Piccadilly's Meat Rack. But this is not just Pussy's story, and as hitherto-muffled paramilitary violence blows up in her face, Pussy falls apart, providing a vivid and unsettling final comment on the human price paid in 1970s Ireland. -- Alan Stewart

"'Wild, hilarious, merciless and fiendishly clever' Independent on Sunday 'He is the fortunate possessor of a save and unfettered imagination; his books... dissect life's miseries with a gleaming comedic scalpel' The Times 'It finds humour in places that other writers are afraid to look for it' Sunday Telegraph 'This is a savagely funny and authentically tragic novel of an Ireland in unhappy transition and beneath McCabe's perfectly delivered black comedy lies an angry heart' GQ" --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Originally published in 1998. Paddy Pussy is a juvenile transvestite from the small town of Tyreelin. A question is raised whether he is just a transvestite who longs to settle down in a loving relationship or whether he is a cunningly disguised IRA bomber ready to wreak destruction and death.

Set in Ireland in the1970s, Breakfast on Pluto follows the exploits of Patrick “Pussy” Braden, an endearing but deceptively tough young man. Abandoned as a baby in his small Irish hometown and aware from a very early age that he is different, Patrick survives this harsh environment with the aid of his wit, charm and a sweet refusal to let anyone or anything change who he is. This is a surreal and magical tale, a funny, moving and poignant rites of passage novel. It is also a vivid and unsettling comment on the human price paid in the cultural and political climate of Ireland at that time. 'Wild, hilarious, merciless and fiendishly clever' Independent on Sunday 'He is the fortunate possessor of a savage and unfettered imagination; his books . . . dissect life's miseries with a gleaming comedic scalpel' The Times 'It finds humour in places that other writers are afraid to look for it' Sunday Telegraph 'This is a savagely funny and authentically tragic novel of an Ireland in unhappy transition and beneath McCabe's perfectly delivered black comedy lies an angry heart' GQ --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Patrick McCabe was born in Clones, County Monaghan, Ireland in 1955. He is the author of the children's story The Adventures of Shay Mouse and the novels Music on Clinton Street, Carn, The Butcher Boy (winner of the Irish Times/Aer Lingus Literature Prize and shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize), The Dead School, Breakfast on Pluto (shortlisted for the 1998 Booker Prize), Mondo Desperando , Emerald Germs of Ireland and Call Me The Breeze . He lives in Sligo with his wife and two daughters. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.