Breakfast on Pluto

Patrick McCabe

1998 Nominee

Man Booker Prize

12 July 2012
9781447230878
208 pages

Synopsis

‘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