June 1998

Breakfast on Pluto
by Patrick McCabe
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(hardback; 18.00 IRP / 26.50 USD)

"Although I'm afraid I don't get too many clients these days! I can just imagine the reaction of my old acquaintances if they saw me now, sitting here in my silly old coat and headscarf - off out that door and down the Kilburn High Road with the lot of them, no doubt! Still, no point in complaining - after all, every beauty has to lose her looks sometime and if the gold-digging days of poor old darling poo poo puss are gone for ever, well then, so be it. I ain't gonna let it bother me, girls!"

This novel is a horrifying, intensely disturbing and brilliantly funny novel, a ride from the depths of personal despiar and fear to the heights of sordid glamour.

Patrick 'Pussy' Braden, resplendent in housecoat and headscarf, sits in Kilburn, writing his story, 'The Life and Times of Patrick Braden', for Dr. Terence, his elusive psychiatrist, reawakening the truth behind his life in Ireland and the chaos of his days in a city filled with tragedy.

Twenty years ago he escaped Tyreelin, his hometown, fleeing his drunken foster mother, 'Whiskers' Braden, and her shambolic realm - a house overcrowded with sticky children and empty stout bottles - to forget the horrors of his childhood and begin a new life in London. There he plies his trade in his blouson tops and milkmaid maxis, often risking his life amongst the flotsam and jetsam that fill the pubs of Piccadilly Circus.

But the sharply dressed businessmen and the lonely old women are not the only dangers that threaten Pussy's existence. It is the 1970s and violence and fear haunt the streets of London and Belfast as Pussy's nights of Dusty Springfield wigs and glittered stockings are invaded by the horror of a conflict he cannot avoid.

In this novel, the author recreates those feral times, describing, with fearsome exactitude and breathtaking insight, the violence that lies at the heart of the twentieth century.

Patrick McCabe was born in Clones, County Monaghan, in 1955. He has published a children's story, The Adventures of Shay Mouse, and four other adult novels: Music on Clinton Street (1986), Carn (1989), The Butcher Boy (1992) which was the winner of the Irish Times/Aer Lingus Literature Prize and was shortlisted for the UK's Booker Prize, and The Dead School (1995). His play, Frank Pig Says Hello, based on The Butcher Boy, was first performed at the Dublin Festival in 1992, and he co-write the screenplay for Neil Jordan's highly acclaimed film of the Butcher Boy. He currently lives in Sligo.