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Breakfast on Pluto
 
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Breakfast on Pluto (Hardcover)

by Patrick McCabe (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 208 pages
  • Publisher: Picador (22 May 1998)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0330352938
  • ISBN-13: 978-0330352932
  • Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 14.2 x 2.3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 725,582 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #20 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > M > McCabe, Patrick

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review
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

Product Description
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.

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Customer Reviews

8 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (8 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Search for belonging in the 60s and 70s, 24 May 2005
This review is from: Breakfast on Pluto (Paperback)
'Breakfast on Pluto' introduces Patrick 'Pussy' Braden, born in 1955 in an Irish border village of Tyreelin in the thick of political trouble, and dumped unceremoniously into the care of Hairy Ma Braden, 'the Baby Farmer' leaving a young Patrick to work out his origins and develop a sense of belonging. This is very much Pussy's story - transvestite, cabaret performer, prostitute and self-described 'sad nutty fairy' - scribbled down with inimitable style as Pussy struggles to find meaning in his life in London through the '60s and '70s. I had some trouble empathising overly with Pussy's situation, especially as he uses people in much the same way as they use him. Pussy's increasingly drugged-up narration makes it hard work for the reader to separate fact from fiction and, whilst overall McCabe has fairly convincingly captured Pussy's voice, the tone wasn't as incisive, acerbic or downright bitchy as I would expect from a drag performer used to defending their appearance or a sex-worker leading a rough life.

Curiously, a number of chapters of 'Breakfast on Pluto' concern IRA events in which Pussy has no direct involvement - indeed, the main narrative of Pussy's story seems largely, almost entirely, disconnected from IRA issues. Nevertheless, in terms of content, these chapters are amongst the most interesting and effective in the book: Pussy's childhood friend Irwin Kerr would have made a particularly interesting character for further development. Despite suffering somewhat from structural and character-development problems, overall, 'Breakfast on Pluto' is a challenging and entertaining read: as an added bonus, Pussy's narrative comes with its own soundtrack of the times that guarantees going to bed humming classics like 'Heard it Through the Grapevine' or Lindsay de Paul's 'Sugar Me'.

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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Looking for love in all the wrong places., 23 Dec 2002
By Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)   
With his grim humor, ironic detachment, and mordant examination of profoundly disturbed psyches, McCabe always provides thrills and chills for the reader, forcing us to share the unique lives and grotesquely skewed viewpoints of his characters. Here the reader is drawn into the mind of transvestite prostitute Pussy Braden, the son of a priest and the teenage Mitzi Gaynor lookalike he raped, as he asks "How can I ever belong on this earth?" and tries, often pathetically, to find the answer.

Set in the 1960's and 1970's, a time in which IRA bombings occur as frequently as Beatles hits, McCabe's tale juxtaposes sectarian violence against Pussy's search for love and a very personal peace, the enormity of the bloodshed contrasting with Pussy's campy search for the perfect costume, fabric, or skin cream, and the grand goal of "political justice" contrasting with Pussy's search for a home. Pussy is writing his story for Dr. Terence Harkin, his absent psychiatrist, and the reader quickly discovers that he is a very unreliable narrator, inventing scenarios in which he claims to play significant roles and acting out his fantasies. McCabe's prose style here reflects Pussy's preoccupation with popular music, among other things, often sounding like a cross between the song lyrics of the period and the songs of Shakespeare, with inverted syntax, complex sentence patterns, and the kind of distortions one sometimes finds when a poet strains too hard for a rhyme or a character like Pussy strains too hard for an effect.

While I love McCabe's facility with the language and his ability to make even an unlikely character like Pussy come alive and inspire compassion, this novel felt a bit strained to me. The IRA violence, while certainly a sad part of the life and times, feels more like a parallel track in this novel than an integrated part of Pussy's psyche, and I found myself wondering if McCabe were using it to ratchet up the drama rather than for any light it might shed on Pussy's problems and their complications. Still, McCabe is so good a writer that it's hard to imagine any lover of words and word play not responding enthusiastically to this novel. It may not be as intense as The Butcher Boy or as wickedly thoughtful as The Dead School, but it's vivid and memorable, and in Pussy Braden it features a character not soon forgotten. Mary Whipple

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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Clever yet strangely uninvolving, 20 Aug 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Breakfast on Pluto (Paperback)
This is an easy read, with interesting if rather sad characters, admirably written - yet somehow it left me completely cold. I failed to appreciate the relevance of the Irish setting, too. It could have been anywhere for the purposes of the main character and his history. I finished feeling sure (yet again) that I must have missed something important.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Dinner on Mars
Well the blurb from Amazon pretty much says it all; McCabe has followed up the brilliant 'Butcher Boy' and the equally captivating 'The Dead School' with this novel about an Irish... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Binro The Heretic

5.0 out of 5 stars "Pussy" Braden's attitude should teach us all how to find happiness in the darkest places
Patrick McCabe's beautifully told tale follows the eccentric adventures of the wildly witty and wonderfully weird cross-dressing prostitute, Patrick "Pussy" Braden. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Mr. Nathaniel L. Paice

5.0 out of 5 stars Breaking out in style
I love this book. The story is brilliant, full of clever humour and can be quite shocking really. I don't think I've seen a book written in such a way before, it is a compelling... Read more
Published on 25 Aug 2006 by L. Groves

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant
Pat McCabe does it again. With his unique wit and black humour, we are invited into the life of a transvestite IRA bomber. It makes you really realize how funny life is. Read more
Published on 15 Mar 2000

4.0 out of 5 stars Nothing like a cross-dressing IRA bomber to stir the soul...
As a dumb American, I could probably know more about the troubles in Ireland, but I didn't come to McCabe's third novel looking for that history lesson. Read more
Published on 13 Dec 1999

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