Breakfast on Pluto

�Dysfunctional Ireland in all its glories is here, with humour of the blackest hue, madness and violence, hopelessly randy priests, dodgy politicians, a grand gallery of misfits culminating in McCabe�s hero in Breakfast on Pluto, Patrick �Pussy� Braden, the transvestite prostitute from the village of Tyreelin . . . Wild, hilarious, merciless and fiendishly clever� Ronan Farren, Sunday Independent� �He is the fortunate possessor of a savage and unfettered imagination; his books . . . dissect life�s miseries with a gleaming comedic scalpel� Erica Wagner, The Times �It finds humour in places that other writers are afraid to look for it� David Robson, 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 Magazine� �Without drawing breath, McCabe mixes camp comedy with brutality, making Breakfast on Pluto both funny and deeply shocking� Maxim ��Told with irresistible zest, brio and gaiety . . . McCabe�s brilliant, startling talent is to make enchantingly dashing narratives out of the most ghastly states of mind imaginable, and to induce compassion for lives which seem least to invite it . . . He is a dark genius of incongruity and the grotesque� Hermione Lee, Observer Paperback , 224 pages � � � � � � �Published October 6th 1999 by Harper Perennial (first published May 25th 1998) Patrick McCabe combines a poignant rite-of-passage tale with a vivid commentary on the human cost of the political turmoil of Ireland in the 1970s.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 sweet refusal to let anyone or anything change who he is."Told with irresistible zest, brio and gaiety . . . McCabe’s brilliant, startling talent is to make enchantingly dashing narratives out of the most ghastly states of mind imaginable, and to induce compassion for lives which seem least to invite it . . . He is a dark genius of incongruity and the grotesque." - Hermione Lee, The ObserverPatrick McCabe 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. A drag queen's adventures as a member of the Irish Republican Army. He is Patrick Braden, born of an affair his mother had with a priest, and he works as a prostitute in a small town. Tired of the violence around him he flees to London, only to be recruited by the IRA as a bomber. By the author of Carn