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Haunting
Chris McCool is the narrator of Patrick McCabe's new novel, The Holy City. At age 67, McCool is reminiscing about his life, and the narrator zigs and zags across time periods that it can take the reader a while to feel settled. Born as the illegitimate child of a rich Protestant and poor Catholic farmer, McCool's small town formation was packed with prejudice and insularity. In the 1960s McCool embraced a campy lifestyle that offered some promise to release him from the constraints of his upbringing. While he's dating an older woman, McCool can't quite overcome his obsession with a Nigerian Catholic boy. The darkness of religious and sexual confusion seem to converge. McCool becomes institutionalized. Forty years later, while living with a wife who loves him, McCool reflects on his promise and the degree to which his madness was been cured. Thanks to McCabe's lyrical writing, the haunting and dismal story moves along at a pace and with a verve that keeps a reader turning the pages.

Rating: Two-star (Mildly Recommended)

Looking Back at Life
McCabe, Patrick. "The Holy City", Bloomsbury Publishing, 2009.

Looking Back on Life

Amos Lassen

Chris McCool, mow 67, is a member of the Happy Club. He has a Croatian girlfriend and people tell him that he looks like Roger Moore. He reminisces about his life and remembers Ireland of the 1960's. It was a time that there were no cares and no worries. Doris McCausland would dance on tables and the young men would drool in lust. He was lucky back then too and Doris (Dolly) was his girl. She dressed in tight clothes, she sang sexy songs and she was her own boss. But there was someone else in Chris's life--Marcus Otoyo, a young man from Nigeria who was irresistible. Chris and he were good friends; they shared religion and an appreciation of the finer things of life.
Chris was hopelessly romantic and he was someone crazy, He is the illegitimate son of a wealthy, married women but was raised by a surrogate mother on a plot of land on his real mother's estate. He was a swinger who dated an older women and who held an attraction for another man. He acts impetuously and heis eventually put into an institution. Now 40 years later, McCool tries to reconcile his life and we see his thoughts and read a very skillfully written dark comedy. This is a story about religion and deviance that leads to madness. It's a strange book that is highly readable.
... Read more

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Customer Reviews (12)

A Fragmented Mind
Novelist Patrick McCabe (The Butcher Boy; Breakfast on Pluto) examines the social and political arc of the past twenty-five years in Ireland as a parallel to the shifting fortunes and inexorable decline of his protagonist in Winterwood. The protagonist/narrator's attempts to leap into the competitive modern world exemplify the efforts of his country to do the same. At this and at a more personal level Winterwood is about the difficulty of extricating oneself from the ghosts of the past, and the pernicious nature of deeply imprinted, horrific childhood experiences.

When journalist Redmond Hatch returns to his former home in the rural town of Slievenageeha to write a colorful article about the folk traditions there, he meets a native named Ned Strange and immediately falls under his spell. Strange is a local favorite, with his country dialect, fanciful anecdotes and old Irish songs. His quaintness buys his way into the company of people who see him as a relic, a human time capsule conveniently preserving the history that they view as a novelty. But Redmond sees a different side of Ned when they are alone together, drinking. Ned reveals his belligerence, rage and cruelty--and a good deal of knowledge about Redmond's family life before he left Slievenageeha. Ned is one of several characters who impose themselves, physically and psychically, on children. Throughout the book Ned functions as a catalyst, a plausible character, a composite, a phantom, and a cipher. That McCabe is able to make all of this work indicates the virtuosity of his prose.

Redmond is a man who dearly wants to believe the things he tells us about himself. Like Ned, he has adopted a face that will allow him into polite company while keeping secret the nature he knows he cannot share. To speak the whole truth would tear him apart, and so he denies what he knows and keeps up the relentless patter of our age: the over-energized pep talk and TV-trained self-analysis that pass for conversation in the 21st century. He is a man who must pretend to be ever on the verge of turning over a new leaf. As he persists in his struggle to overcome what is insurmountable, he tries to convince us, and himself, that everything is fine, or nearly fine, or about to be fine.

This masterful study of a damaged mind fragmenting beyond repair comes from one of our most respected contemporary authors. Complex in tone and point of view, the book is both a social chronicle and a record of personal catastrophe.

McCabe takes the quaint veneer of a misrepresented and sentimentalized way of life and shows how nostalgia itself can mask and thereby allow a persistent evil. Redmond refuses to relinquish his gruesome optimism, and it gradually engulfs him. Mocked because of his background and family, he realizes that this is a repudiation of his deepest nature, but cannot offer an articulate, non-violent response. His wife calls his relatives hillbillies, and he laughs along with her, secretly mortified by the pathetic and brutal details of his impoverished youth. His tragedy, if we allow him so grand a conceit, is to be caught between what is expected of him in the world where he tries to live, and what has happened to him in the world he has tried to leave behind.

Couldn't finish it
I got about a fourth of the way through it and just couldn't take it anymore. It was a struggle just to get that far and what I did read was confusing and depressing. Pass on this one.

Should be marketed as a thriller.
Can anyone say "determinism"?The underlying premise of this novel, which has not really been mentioned in most reviews, is that a traumatic childhood experience will inevitably lead to the victim's reenactment of that trauma at an older age, i.e. every victim becomes a criminal.There is a really creepy suggestion that each subsequent generation is, deep down, an exact copy of the previous one.This damaging and disgusting idea purveyed by the novel is just as creepy as the novel's creepy and very contrived thematic of middle-class-father-turned-murderer.At heart, this novel is every bit as problematic as Kevin Kostner's film "Mr. Brooks," another work that seems to suggest that our future, evil actions are genetically coded into us at birth.

Which brings me to my conclusion: this is a trashy thriller that you should probably read while in transit.

Wanted To Like It
I really wanted to like this book better than I did. The premise sounded interesting; the local newspaper mini-review stated that it was the story of a writer who becomes enchanted by an old fiddler he meets in the woods. I immediately ordered the book and could hardly wait to pick it up and read it. Perhaps it's not quite fair to say the writing is bad; it's just not my style and was hard to follow. I appreciated the supernatural aspect of the story and there were moments of real creepiness but it did not "scare me to death", as one fellow writer stated on the back cover. It was too jumbled and jumpy for me to feel the full effect of terror. I must admit the story stayed with me for days after I read it. But I think that if the author had used a different writing style I would have appreciated it more, although I realize each writer has his/her own style. It was not a terrible book - just not quite my cup of tea.

A Poorly Written Novel
I felt that this book was very poorly written.There were too many questions left unanswered.The book reviews on the cover mislead me into expecting an exciting and eerie book, but I did not find this book at all compelling.I had to force myself to finish it.It started out good, but I felt like I was always waiting for something to happen.The ending seemed rushed and incomplete. ... Read more

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With T. S. Eliot's words as his guide, Joey Tallon embarks on a journey toward enlightenment in the troubling psychedelic-gone-wrong atmosphere of the late 1970s. A man deranged by desire, and longing for belonging, Tallon searches for his"place of peace" -- a spiritual landscape located somewhere between his small town in Northern Ireland and Iowa ... and maybe between heaven and hell.

Customer Reviews (7)

mccabe does it for me again.
patrick mccabe never seems to stop amazing me, it doesn't matter whether it's old, new, ancient or frivolous, i fall in love with whatever he writes. character development was once again incredible. this book may be one of my favorites of all time, right next to the butcher boy. i'm not spoiling it for you.

Irish as All Get Out
Comparing this book to THE BUTCHER BOY, I would say that CALL ME THE BREEZE wins hands down in matters of plausbility.I found it all to obvious that a young man like Joey would find himself at odds with society, and yet there's a comic edge to this writing that was missing in his earlier novels, and that imparts a soft, cotton candy feeling to the book which is nice, and makes the reader feel as though the sights and sounds of a small town in Northern Ireland were drifting through the air like a dreamy Maeve Binchy novel, but for men maybe.

The extreme FIGHT CLUB like violence of BUTCHER BOY and the implausible gender hijinks of BREAKFAST ON PLUTO take a back seat now to gentle, Philip Roth style light comedy about a pathetic wanna-be and how he gets to be the way he is.We've all seen the stereotype of the lazy Irish bum with desires bigger than his abilities to satisfy them, blowing bubbles in the air, prone to a large fantasy life, and not much good with women.Now McCabe gives us that character writ in neon letters in this tiny masterpiece of precious prose.One of his best, maybe THE best, and I'm looking forward to the inevitable Adam Sandler movie they make out of it.

Call this a snooze
McCabe's best novels, "Butcher Boy" and "Breakfast on Pluto," managed to convince you that, despite the melodramatic and even ridiculous predicaments that the twisted cartoonish narrators were placed in by their author, a true and distinctive voice expressed his tormented view of Ireland. In "CMTB," the Charlie Manson-meets-Nikolai Gogol, Steppenwolf-Tarantino influences would have made for a decent novella, but nothing can sustain a reader faced with hundreds of pages of snippets from his briefly productive but ultimately solipsistic life. While a couple of the treatments he gives are engrossing on their own, and show how the hundreds of pages have been distilled into genuinely engrossing condensations, the effort expected of a reader to sift through so much dross to find the diamond is likely to discourage all but a McC fan who simply must read his every effort. This rivalled "The Dead School" for tedium, which is unfortunate given the dramatic potential of that and this book.
Even Ardal O'Hanlon's "Knick Knack Paddy Whack,"a first-time effort I found remaindered, offered as much fireworks. For a novelist of McCabe's proven abilities, "CMTB" is slacking off.
If, as the blurb tells us, it took five years to write, perhaps he should take ten per novel, like his fellow Border craftsman John McGahern. Nothing's shocking or compelling this go around.

Three examples: what was his rival Johnston's "Cyclops" thriller all about? Jimmy alludes to its contents in a sentence but given his jealousy towards his plagiarising mentor, why not elaborate? The stint in Mountjoy takes a few pages--whole years go by, with little from his incarceration to influence the rest of the novel, except to mark time, I suppose, and speed up the chronology. I found it curious that the narrative voice went into 3rd person briefly around pg. 296, and I hoped that--late in the game--this portended a fresh angle, but the end dribbles out into a series of dissipated conclusions, none of them that surprising given the unrelenting dreariness of the story.

Compared to noteworthy recent Irish fiction from the northern regions treating similar themes and situations--as disparate as John McGahern (By the Lake), Colin Bateman (Cycle of Violence and Divorcing Jack), Glenn Patterson (Burning Your Own and Number 5), Robert McLiam Wilson (Eureka Street and Ripley Bogle) and Niall Griffith (A Welsh version--in Sheepshagger), Mc Cabe's tale of inflatable dolls, IRA thugs, ennui, drugs, and autodidacts seems tired and exhausted.

nice to have another novel from mccabe, but...
this novel relates the sometimes third-, sometimes first-person narrative of the life of joey tallon, a travis bickle wannabe, and takes place in Northern Ireland in the 70s and 80s.joey's a bit of a deluded tragic hero; his life milestones are like classic "get rich quick" schemes that receive his total initial buy-in but then crumble like the house of cards they are. though the dust jacket announces this novel was 5 years in the making and includes a send-up from none other than bono, this is a pretty weak effort by mccabe standards.The Butcher Boy and Breakfast On Pluto excelled because of compelling narrative voices, characters who do horrible things but who still garner your respect and sympathy, and -- especially in the case of The Butcher Boy -- pure horror.Call Me the Breeze failed IMO because i never really liked or understood joey tallon, his voice cried from different directions without hooking up with a satisfactory mental reason and the plot wasn't very interesting.

An Irish Feast by the Inimitable Patrick McCabe!
Patrick McCabe has long established himself as one of the more gifted contemporary writers and certainly one of the more creative.His writing style takes some getting used to for the novice McCabe reader, but despite what appears to be a confusingly insurmountable task in his first chapters, perseverance pays off and McCabe's gifts are stunning!

CALL ME THE BREEZE, aptly titled, traverses the fanciful, quasi-delusional life of one Joey Tallon from the 1970s to the present. Joey lives in Ireland, is surrounded by a throng of characters that could be either real or drawn from his imagination.His adventures run the gamut from drugs, to crime and subsequent incarceration, to poetry, to screenplay writing, to Don Quixotesque, Don Juan-likemeanderings with multiple Dulcineas, delusional inamorata - all the fantasies we have grown to appreciate form McCabe's mind - along with piquant and tender moments of actual introspection and intellectual diversions.Joey Tallon is a newly created figure that McCabe now places in the sanctum sanctorum of unforgettable literary 'heroes'.Yes, he is manic, contagiously enthusiastic about everything he encounters (or fantasizes), recklessly susceptible to heroes from Charles Manson to Hermann Hesse to Joni Mitchell, given to obsessive ambitions, yet he at all times is wholly lovable and believable to the reader.Think Stephen Daedalus, Holden Caulfield, etc.

Gratefully there are many authors writing today with abundant talent: Patrick McCabe is toward the head of the line. He is not an easy read, but delving into this book will be an adventure you are unlikely to find elsewhere.For those new to his style perhaps reading THE BUTCHER BOY first will allow you to jump in to CALL ME THE BREEZE without the struggles that may face first time readers of his books.A significant novel and a true joy! ... Read more

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"When I was a young lad twenty or thirty or forty years ago I lived in a small town where they were all after me on account of what I done on Mrs. Nugent."

Thus begins Patrick McCabe's shattering novel The Butcher Boy, a powerful and unrelenting journey into the heart of darkness. The bleak, eerie voice belongs to Francie Brady, the "pig boy," the only child of and alcoholic father and a mother driven mad by despair. Growing up in a soul-stifling Irish town, Francie is bright, love-starved, and unhinged, his speech filled with street talk, his heart filled with pain... his actions perfectly monstrous.

Held up for scorn by Mrs. Nugent, a paragon of middle-class values, and dropped by his best friend, Joe, in favor of her mamby-pamby son, Francie finally has a target for his rage -- and a focus for his twisted, horrific plan.

Dark, haunting, often screamingly funny, The Butcher Boy chronicles the pig boy's ominous loss of innocence and chilling descent into madness. No writer since James Joyce has had such marvelous control of rhythm and language... and no novel since The Silence Of The Lambs has stunned us with such a macabre, dangerous mind.Amazon.com Review
"I was thinking how right ma was -- Mrs. Nugent all smileswhen she met us and how are you getting on Mrs and young Francis areyou both well? . . .what she was really saying was: Ah hello MrsPig how are you and look Philip do you see what's coming now -- ThePig Family!"

This is a precisely crafted, often lyrical, portrait of the descentinto madness of a young killer in small-town Ireland."Imagine HuckFinn crossed with Charlie Starkweather," said The WashingtonPost. Short-listed for the Bram Stoker Award and England'sprestigious Booker Prize. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (66)

Sympathy for the Devil
Commentators on the jacket of this book refer to Francie Brady as a psychopath or an abuse victim or something like that.Fortunately, "The Butcher Boy" is no such disease-of-the-week television special.If it were, it would not have gained the reputation it has now and those same commentators never would have read it.So there.

This is even more ironic than it sounds, because whatever Francie's character flaws (and they are plentiful), those commentators share at least one characteristic with the people of Francie's small Irish town.None of them really see him as himself - rather, they all jump to conclusions about the kid and therefore look askance at him even when he's trying to behave properly.Which, admittedly, he does only upon occasion.

So who is this kid, anyway?In the novel's first sentence he's reminiscing about a time he had to hide out by the river because of something he did to Mrs. Nugent.He seems a little unclear about how many decades have passed.And in some ways you don't need to know much more about him; this first sentence tells you that his behavior is at least problematic, possibly dangerous, and his mental process is such that he may or may not have a good grip on reality.Later on we learn that his mother is suicidal, his father alcoholic, he has only one friend to speak of, and pretty nearly everyone has been lying to him for quite a while about a great many things.

Clearly, if you're looking for an uplifting tale, you should go somewhere else.One of the things that makes "The Butcher Boy" worth your time is that Patrick McCabe makes a genuine and largely successful effort to get inside Francie's head.The narrative is first-person and in colloquial Irish language, and although the incidents are seldom pleasant, Francie's way of describing them can be very funny.

For example, he hallucinates from time to time - I told you his grip on reality isn't the strongest - about things like the Virgin Mary standing around in a meadow waiting to have a word with him.He sees this while at a reform school run by the Catholic Church, and there's a priest there who finds him and his visions quite arousing.Well, what would you do in a circumstance like that?Francie takes it all in stride, quickly figures out which saints the priest most wants to hear about, and pretends he saw them, too.

As for Mrs. Nugent - well, she does go so far as to refer to the entire Brady family as "pigs", which isn't nice at all.So Francie bugs the Nugents at home whenever he gets the chance, and at one point seeks to charge them a "pig toll tax" as they walk down the street.Cute.Then he invades their home when they're out and vandalizes it.Less cute.And things go downhill from there.

The thing is, as he describes his destruction of the Nugent house - and his harassment of his one friend Joe when he thinks Joe is growing distant - Francie speaks of it as if he were just having a lark.He understands perfectly well when Mr. Nugent gets angry, but he's not particularly angry himself.He does and says just as he pleases, however furious it makes the priests at school or his neighbors or anyone else.So you read "The Butcher Boy" on two levels at once.On the one hand, you can't believe that anyone would do what Francie does - it's just too outrageous for comprehension.On the other hand, you sort of admire him for his irrepressible pluck, which would be downright lovable if he weren't so cruel.

Hey, what do I know, Francie may be a certifiable psychopath."The Butcher Boy" doesn't really read like that, though.Francie has feelings that can be, and often are, hurt.If I personally had to deal with a punk like this in real life, of course, I wouldn't care much about his feelings, but that's one of the functions of literature - to show us experiences we'd never have in the real world.Francie may lack empathy, but we don't.

Does he lack empathy?Probably.I said he can be hurt and he can certainly get angry, but although he's seldom surprised by other people's anger at him when he does something hurtful, he hasn't got a clue in advance as to what their reactions will be.Quite apart from the hallucinations, what plans he does make are totally unrealistic and he seldom follows them anyway.He understands the social rules and frequently promises himself that he will follow them, but it doesn't take much to knock him off track.Indeed, he's perfect as a butcher boy, which is not only the title of an Irish song that his mother sings, it's also the title of the job he takes.

Speaking of "The Butcher Boy", the song describes the life of Francie's mother pretty well, being about a girl who falls in love with the wrong young man.You can quickly guess that Francie himself is just such a young man to the nth degree, but this novel is surely one of the few works that tries to tell the traditional wronged-woman story from the wronging man's point of view without making excuses for him.True, for all his charm, you certainly wouldn't want to meet Francie in a dark alley.On the other hand, it's not like anyone else in town has much empathy for him either.

Does this pardon him?Ah, there's the question.And here's another - Can you empathize with someone who maybe doesn't deserve it?That, and not Francie's mental confusion, is the story here.I was left with the feeling that Francie may not be worth much, but the story is worth a great deal.

Benshlomo says, The wise man learns wisdom from the dust in the road.

It's a good book, but you need to let it simmer
Plot reviews and synopsis details abound through the various five star reviews. If you want a breakdown about what the book is about, then check there first. Instead I will cut to the chase and try to offer you a glimpse into what you may or may not like about the novel.

First off, this is a 'stream of conscious' type of book that places you right into the mind of a teenager in Ireland (though in truth it is really the narrator as an old man looking back to "when [he] was a young lad of twenty or thirty or forty years ago [when he] lived in a small town...". That opening line will tell you a lot about the book, considering the narrator is not even sure how long ago it was, or even how old he presumably is. There is no argument about it, this is a difficult book to read. Sentence fragments and run-ons are everywhere, there is a heavy lack of punctuation (no quotation marks anyplace), and the topic can change 180 degrees in the same (presumably) sentence. You have to be willing to give the book your time if you want to enjoy it, and trust me, it is worth it.

As many reviews point out, the book is dark and morbid. Watching Francie fall into a pit of helplessness and despair makes you hope he realizes his actions, but that downward spiral is far to consuming. What we have here is a study of the trials and paths that the criminally insane take. Fancie is a sociopath, delusional, perhaps even schizophrenic. If this is something that piques your interest, then it may very well fit your tastes.

McCabe does not hold anything back in his narration and I would not be surprised to see people who are offended by this book. The people (women especially) in the town are portrayed as nitwits, naive, and just plain dumb. The kid's dad is a drunk, his mother strung-out, his uncle a fake, and the priests pedophiles (well, one main priest anyway, but the rest are still degraded and make your skin crawl with ickyness). Fortunately, Irish politics does not show up in any major ways, which is nice. That topic has been beat to death, several times. Instead McCabe focuses on the individual and humanity. He questions our own actions through the actions of Francie. And it is hard not to feel pity, maybe even like the kid a bit and root for him. He loses his parents, his role models, and his best friend even abandons him for his worst enemies (the Nugents). Yet we are still disgusted by him. In the back of our minds we know he has gone of the deep end, and we know where it is leading and will end, but you still can't help that spark of not wanting to realize it.

McCabe set out to engage the reader with this work. If you are willing to give him the time to read the work in the same way he took the time to offer it, you will be pleasantly surprised. This is not for the feint of heart, nor, may I dare say, for the casual reader. The plot does tend to drag on at times (which intends to show that this was not an instant change in Francie, but rather a slow moving infection). Most of the reviews that offered low scores comment on that very fact--that they had to stop 1/3 or 1/2 through the book because it bogged down. That may be true. More than once I had to stop and wonder if I would make it through, but it was well worth it. This book is much more of a character study and a look at insanity than a book with action, mysteries, frightening scares, or romance. It is about me; it is about you; it is the criminally insane; it is about humanity. And we all know what infections humanity carries with it.

Banana
If bananas are the world's perfect food (as banana growers would have us all believe) then this book is the banana of literature. Sum it up in two words: brilliant and heartbreaking. Why are you reading this review--you should be reading this book! I'd like to give it 5 stars twice! And so on . . .

I was so looking forward to this book.
I've only once put up a review on a book I disliked.Actually I rarely write a review, but have several times in the past and usually on a book that really touched me and stood out in my mind.This book certainly stands out so I will review it.I absolutely hated this book!I'm so disappointed because I was fully expecting to really enjoy it.Not so!As one other reviewer put it - "one mind-numbing, expletive-filled page after another" fits the book perfectly.I kept plugging away, expecting to hook up with the book, but by page 100 I just gave it up.A terrible disappointment.

Muck, pluck, mick, pigs
Re-reading this after a decade, (really rated 3.5 stars) over the past two nights--half the book at a sitting, as the pace demands such immersion--I find the book more horrifying than the hilarious incidents I dimly recalled. The penchant of the Irish for gallows humo[u]r has never been more thoroughly hung up, drawn, and quartered. It's an act that McCabe in his later "Breakfast on Pluto" again takes on: sexual abuse, pedophilia, dressing up a lad in women's clothing, not to mention the usual clerical abuse, crazies, drunks, slatterns, bogmen, poor parenting skills, and village layabouts.

If McCabe was, say, from London with no Irish connections, this book might well have been vilified as stereotype. The movie version, by the way, played up the clerical abuse and Marian visionary subplots much more prominently than they were featured in the book taken as a whole. Anyone familiar with Ireland since 1985-2000 would know why these two plot-points would gain presumably an eager audience expecting scandal and satire via the scenes around fallen idols of a past generation.

As it is, the immersion that the prose forces upon you makes for a bracing plunge into a demented, yet often logical in its illogical reliance on instinct rather than intellect, that pulses in Francie's head. The black humor of many passages, as the novel goes on, becomes less entrancing, and as the casualty rate climbs of those near Francie, you tend to lose your identification with the protagonist. This element comes close to the book and film or "A Clockwork Orange," although McCabe eschews Burgess' philosophical and theological undertones concerning free will, psychological trauma, and sin. The political and sectarian allusions that the Publisher's Weekly blurb cited above mention completely escaped me, I confess, although I noted only that Nugent, like Joe Purcell's surname are Norman derived and not native Celtic, and this registered softly as another badge of distinction. Any stress upon the Nugent's Protestantism has to also consider that Joe too becomes as much a part of that class as the Nugents, and Joe, so it seemed at the start of the book, was pretty much equal to Francie in status. Any resentment Francie harbors for the Nugents seems much more class-based than religiously fueled. Francie's animus heeds shame more than sin.

The book would have been far better if the demands of a slasher-seeking marketplace mean that at least an up-and-coming writer (such was McCabe circa 1992 when this was published in Britain) cannot put out a frightening but well-honed hundred-page novella but has to stretch out the tale with padded incidents and repititious scenes so it swells well more than twice that length for a book-length manuscript to sell.

Still, this is where to start, and then Breakfast. If Breakfast had come first, it may well have reversed the order of merit; the two novels are paired well, for better and worse, in similar set-ups and characterization and style. I read a later novel, Call Me the Breeze, which again tries the tale told by a misfit full of sound and fury, but to less successful results. Trouble is, even in this his best book (although Breakfast's a close second), the traces of McCabe's influences indelibly endure: Salinger, Faulkner, Joyce, Beckett, and Burgess among others. The author knows how to channel these formidible forebears into his own take on early 60s Ireland, but the pat nature of some of the incidents that Francie finds himself in on his picaresque journey from home to asylum back to home and back to incarceration seem--as in other such allegorical or symbolically driven stories from the past centuries--a bit too neatly arranged and so to bely the realism that in the many smaller details in the childhood and village scenes do show that McCabe's capable of more original craft.

McCabe's prose is by far the best feature of this book, and how he manages to out you into Francie's convoluted mentality while affording by carefully placed seemingly tangential details that clue us into what the narrator himself cannot understand is skillfully done. So much so that this technique over the long course of even a rather short novel means that its pages are densely packed with what becomes dispiriting, depressing, and self-lacerating incidents which no plucky turn-of-phrase after a while can repair. This slim book weighs you down.

The stamina of author, plot, and main character cannot last until the last pages with the reckless spirit with which it started. Too much sadness accumulates. But perhaps, despite the flaws, this is appropriate for this type of story, when as the horrors mount, the laughter fades and we find ourselves face-to-face with the muck. I remember what no character here recalls, even in an Ireland then (circa 1962--Bay of Pigs incident is in the background of the latter portion of the novel) compelled to try to educate its children in Irish, that muck comes fittingly from "muc," Irish word for pig. ... Read more

Product Description

Breakfast on Pluto, Patrick McCabe's lyrical and haunting new novel, became a #1 bestseller in Ireland, stayed on the bestseller list for months, and was nominated for the Booker Prize, one of the world's most prestigious literary awards. With wonderful delicacy and subtle insight and intimation, McCabe creates Mr. Patrick "Pussy" Braden, the enduringly and endearingly hopeful hero(ine) whose gutsy survival and yearning quest for love resonate in and drive the glimmering, agonizing narrative in which the troubles are a distant and immediate echo and refrain. Twenty years ago, her ladyship escaped her hometown of Tyreelin, Ireland, fleeing her foster mother Whiskers (prodigious Guinness-guzzler, human chimney) and her mad household, to begin a new life in London. There, in blousey tops and satin miniskirts, she plies her trade, often risking life and limb amongst the flotsam and jetsam that fill the bars of Piccadilly Circus. But suave businessmen and lonely old women are not the only dangers that threaten Pussy. It is the 1970's and fear haunts the streets of London and Belfast as the critical mass of history builds up, and Pussy is inevitably drawn into a maelstrom of violence and tragedy destined to blow his fragile soul asunder. Brilliant, startling, profound and soaring, Breakfast on Pluto combines light and dark, laughter and pain, with such sensitivity, directness and restraint that the dramatic impact reverberates in our minds and hearts long after the initial impression.

Patrick "Pussy" Brady is recording her memoirs for the mysterious Dr.Terence, and it's quite some story. After randy Father Bernard gets carriedaway with his temporaryhousekeeper, 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 withthe alcoholic Hairy Braden. Escape comes in fantasies of Vic Damone and theoccasional glitzy frock, and eventually, inevitably, the rebaptised "Pussy"heads for life as a transvestite rent boy on Piccadilly's Meat Rack. Butthis is not just Pussy's story; as hitherto-muffled paramilitaryviolence blows up in her face, Pussy falls apart, providing a vivid andunsettling final comment on the human price paid in 1970s Ireland.--Alan Stewart ... Read more

Customer Reviews (31)

B+
It is of utmost importance to proceed with caution whilst reading Patrick McCabe's critically lauded piece of fantastical narrative. It is not for everyone, and is most definitely not an easy read. The protagonist is unreliable at times; she blurs the lines between reality and her own internal fantasies. Most of the time, the reader isn't quite sure what is actually happening and what is in her head. The story line is halted, at times, to tell the story of a different person, a device used to convey the brutality of the IRA-heavy period. With a rocky beginning and a solid ending, the middle teeters between disastrous melancholy and hopeless romanticism and innocence. McCabe utilizes numerous motifs (space, perfume/scent) and themes (paternity, violence, music) to create a world that is similar to ours, yet is somehow a bit off-balance. Hence, the idea of Pluto. Inverted syntax abounds, particularly in areas where Pussy, the transgendered character, is least in touch with the world around her. Despite chronic confusion and various gaps in interest, McCabe creates a desperately real world, and the woman who will be forever isolated from it, be it through gender, politics, or others that attempt to isolate her from society.

(Note: it helps to watch the movie first. While both can be independent of each other, the movie helps to stream line and clarify the time line of events and happenings.)

Books adapted into film rarely translate perfectly; no exception here.
The voice McCabe creates here for Pussy has a unique style that, while precious and pleasing to many (including myself), may not be enamouring for everyone. Breakfast on Pluto is a book that draws you in and often breaks your heart, but can just as well leave you happy for the heroine on the next page. Pussy isn't always likable, doesn't always do the smart thing, and gets herself into a good many situations that she could have avoided easily... but I finished the book with a definite love for the character.

The book and movie are quite different, so if you've just watched the movie and are looking for the same thing in print, you won't get it. Each should be consumed and judged on their own merits - and both are beyond excellent, in my opinion.

This is an unusual story about a darling person.
I fell in love with this book and film.Absolutely could not put it down.So well done and so original.

What a mess!
I read this book prior to watching the movie.The movie is now one of my favorites of all time.This book however is one of the worst books I have read and I read a LOT.

I will say up front that at least part of my difficulty with this book is the slang.What I mean is the author and character of the book are Irish, so perhaps I just couldn't pick up the language, and that may be my own shortcoming.

That being said, the main problem with this book is that it is all over the place.The narrator will suddenly write three or four pages about some random people that we don't know, have never read about, and do not ever read about again.The problem with that is that it makes you wonder what the point of those interactions and antecdotes are exactly.That's just one example of the "messy" part I am referring to.I found myself re-reading almost every other page wondering what I missed, trying to figure out where this and that came from.I am not even sure why, but I never felt much for Patrick.Although what he describes is awful and sad, I never really felt like I could identify with him and I never felt bonded with him like I would expect to.

Another problem in my opinion is that I don't feel that the character ever evolves or changes.Patrick does go through a lot and experiences a lot of things, most of them hateful and disgusting (not on his part though) and he spends his time being upset over his mother who abandoned him yet I don't feel that there is ever any resolution or progression at all.I got to the end of the book wondering what the point was, wondering if there was any point at all.This book left me feeling pretty s****y about humanity, not that I need much to make me feel that way.

The ONLY thing that stopped me from giving Breakfast one star is the simple fact that an incredibly heartfelt and beautiful, even inspiring movie was born from this muddled piece of work.The movie is "never" better than the book.Well this is one of about three cases I know of where that is absolutely not true.I never thought I'd say this about ANY movie adaptation of a book....SAVE YOURSELF THE TIME AND WATCH THE MOVIE INSTEAD.

Paddy Pussy fan
I was a bit lost with the book. I had seen the movie and thought Paddy Pussy wonderful. Always a mistake to do it that way round, I guess. The writing did give an inkling of how Pussy's mind works and the disparate chapters helped to reinforce this. I found, though, that this made me, as reader, more detached from any kind of narrative. However it led to a wonderful movie so I should be grateful to Patrick McCabe for that. ... Read more

Product Description
For most people, family life means both love and compromise. Within families where one or more members have Asperger Syndrome (AS), this compromise becomes yet more crucial to mutual happiness. In a revealing and candid account, the McCabe family discusses how Patrick's AS affects each relationship - with his wife (Estelle), son (Jared), other family members, friends and colleagues - and how they have all learned to accommodate each other's varying needs. Focusing positively on the relationships that are both the most important and the most difficult to maintain, this book is invaluable for anyone closely involved with AS. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

positive and successful but could be better
Many books on this topic are not as positive as this or have a succesful Asperger individual writing it! However, I'm not positive but I'm pretty sure the child and wife who also wrote this book are also mildly disabled too (not necessarilly Asperger's but possibly) and the family is just oblivious of this. That doesn't disvalue anything of what any of them say at all; however if they missed this they missed putting other very important details that should have been covered in this brief book also. If you have Asperger's I hope you can relate with what I'm saying especially after reading this book! Including stating that they know although the author was this way that that doesn't mean they think all people with this syndrome are. They never said they all were but they didn't say the opposite and for some reader's especially people with the syndrome I bet they need to here that in order to not assume they thought otherwise.This book can be useful but, it isn't a complete book on the topic for those just beginning to learn about this syndrome. That's not what I expected or I think what the book is met to be, but the advice could be more Asperger Specific. It is very general good advice for people to take on how to deal with many people not just those with Asperger's. And if you know quite a bit on this topic don't expect to learn anything new.If you want a book on positive Asperger's with the best roll model defiantly get Diagnosing Jefferson instead or additional to this book! It's better especially if you want a more thourough, complete, or slightly more advanced book on the topic.But, to use this book for the man and family as a role model to prove Asperger's can succeeed in the write environment surrounded with the right attidutes both personally and professionally is defiantly a good reason to get this book!The author's a manager for crying out loud!

One Size Does NOT Fit All
While this author does an excellent job of providing personal accounts of having Asperger's, which is a neurobiological condition on the Autism spectrum, there are too many inconsistencies and fallacious claims this book endorses.

Autism and Asperger's (a/A) is NOT a disease.Autism and Asperger's are neurobiological conditions that affect sensory processing; communication and often impede social development.The very suggestion that the a/A spectrum is a disease is just not true and is patently ludicrous.

While I can't give this work a ringing endorsement, I can say that if it has helped others, particularly in intrafamilial relationships understand what people on the autism spectrum contend with, then it has served a good purpose.

Great read, but generalizations aren't true for all Aspies
I very much enjoyed this book, and found a lot of truth and encouragement in it.
But as a person who has Asperger Syndrome herself, I disagree with some of the generalizations the McCabes use. While it may be true for Patrick that he needs to do several things at once, for instance, it is entirely impossible for me to do more than one thing at a time. Multitasking will often lead to total confusion, and eventually extreme irritability or shutdown in me.
I am also not very organized, I am completely unable to keep my house tidy. And while I fit their concept of Aspies having a high IQ in the gifted range, my sister, who also has AS has normal intelligence (on the other hand, she IS very organized).
So, while all they say is true for Patrick, his gifts, work and relationships, Aspies are individuals, too, and quite different from each other.
That said, I do recommend this book to anyone who has a friend or family member with AS, as it is very helpful in explaining how people with AS think, perceive their surroundings and feel different, and how to make family life pleasant and loving by respecting the AS person (and in turn, the person with AS trying his/her best, to understand and love their family and friends).

It's all about love!
This book shows some of the day-to-day struggles within a family with one of the members having Asperger Syndrome. Yet the family does a pretty convincing job of communicating that AS has its positive side as well! This is an upbeat helpful book for all who wish to understand their friend, co-worker or loved one with AS.

Living and Loving with Asperger Syndrome
If you have a friend or family member with aspergers syndrome you simply must read this book. It does a masterful job of helping us "normal" people not only understand someone with AS but also suggests simple adjusments we can make that mean the world to them. I have a close friend with AS and after reading this book I have learned new ways to truly enjoy a wonderful healthy friendship. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Schoolhouse Mock
Having read, and reviewed for Amazon, The Butcher Boy, Breakfast on Pluto, and Call Me the Breeze, I acknowledge that McCabe keeps plowing deeper along this same furrow: a lyrical narrative voice that tells relentlessly but as if charmingly of horror and madness. A difficult p-o-v to carry off, time and time again. Although few would immediately compare McCabe to his compatriot John Banville with his more middle-class, literate, and repressed Irish taletellers, still both authors strive to depict men at war within themselves, scarred by an often adolescent or boyhood experience that they can never escape. Banville prefers nuance, McCabe selects vertigo.



I had read this a decade ago but remembered little of it. I thought that I had not liked it that much compared to B Bpy or the later B on P. I gave it another chance, and find that the gradual onset of "an early retirement from both the schoolroom and sanity" in both Raphael Bell and Malachy Dudgeon is handled at its best in poignant and restrained fashion. For example, as Malachy haunts the Grand Canal, under a sky of lead and a city the color of dishwater, he stands near the bench with its statue of Patrick Kavanagh. The canal, however, clogged with green scum, reveals none of the sylvan peace that comforted McCabe's Ulster-born predecessor. Similarly, Malachy in his collapsing relationship with Marion shows surprising moments-- given that this is a McCabe novel-- of isolation and the need for consoling words that cannot come to Malachy's lips, even as he tries to make amends and seek comfort from his girlfriend.



Raphael and Malachy share trauma rooted in a childhood moment of a parent's revelation to their son. One is intentionally attempted and one is witnessed at secondhand. Without giving away the scenes or the plot, these vignettes show again McCabe's skill at giving the reader real unfeigned agony and heartache beneath the rather smirking, smart-aleck tone that dominates the omniscient narrator's own voice as the tale is told, as if to another group of sniggering students.



The trouble is that as troubles accumulate in 1970s Ireland, and ones that have far less directly to do with the Troubles in the North and more with the collapse of Catholic and patriotic ideologies in the Republic, their sheer weight tends to weary the reader about 60% of the way through the book. This is three hundred pages of practically no likeable characters, despite the blurb above on Amazon. Marie Evans as drawn here appears all too familiar as an exemplar of the Mary Robinson type of figure who would lead the transformation of Ireland-- the children replace a trip to Kilmainham Jail to honor the 1916 martyr-rebels with a day out at Waterword theme park. But, Raphael's hatred for Evans and the Terry Krash show and all the harbingers of today's secularizing Ireland would have gained intensity if they did not have hundreds of pages to burn through in their rage. Malachy's stint as a Withnail and I type of layabout in London again gets plaudits in its portrayal, but the detail is both too vague and too mundane for the years to register fully. I know part of this diffusion for both protagonists is their own mental decay, but this long slide downhill, unrelieved by much humor or relief, adds up to a wearisome trudge through the cobwebs of both men's vacant skulls.



I fail to find the whimsical light touch in this narrative, which stacks depressingly a series of increasingly miserable setbacks upon its frail schoolteacher pair. The narrator's voice from the start stays stoic and resigned. Fatalism pervades the book. True, a critique of Irish culture emerges, but no respite from the malaise arrives.



While the book probes deep into the damaged psyches of both men, and their antagonisms against each other and against the system that has failed them in a liberalizing society, these relevant and sociologically stimulating points are drawn out in this fiction to near tedium. As a portrait of a changing Irish psyche under the onslaught of the 60s and 70s, the novel has merit. But as a gripping read, more than Butcher Boy and Breakfast on Pluto-- which for all their verve also followed rather predictable arcs akin to this novel-- The Dead School offers a place few may care to seek out even for a first read, unless enamored of every word McCabe has published. The talent remains, but the energy dissipates in a narrative that amounts to entrapment within the imploded mind. These labyrinths, as Beckett, Flann O'Brien, William Burroughs, Celine, Kafka and Philip K. Dick all found, challenge even the most imaginative fantasists when stretched into full-length novels.

Even more engrossing than I expected!
Having already read McCabe's chilling book, The Butcher Boy, I was looking forward to a repeat of the damaged but sympathetic characters and the delicious horror one finds there.This novel, however, boasts a broader scope and more subtle characterization than The Butcher Boy.More ambitious, but just as seductive, it boasts two main characters of different generations and personalities, colliding with nightmarish results.Because the characters are so normal, even happy, at the beginning, and their deterioration seems so accidental and avoidable, the sense of sadness and loss one feels at the end is even more intense.

Malachy Dudgeon is a young man whose childhood, though not ideal, is not bizarre, either.As a boy, he experiences love and security within his family, which more than outweighs any damage from bullying he faces by older kids, even when his family situation changes.Eventually, he goes to college, falls in love, becomes a teacher almost by accident, and is hired to work in a private boys' school in Dublin.Raphael Bell is his Headmaster.We learn of Raphael's almost idyllic childhood, his great success as a student, his firm friendships, his early career, and his shy love and eventual marriage.Passages of great, lyrical beauty pervade these descriptions.Inexorably, however, Bell's conservative, moralistic, and formal approaches to life and education come into conflict with the casual attitudes toward discipline, structure, scholarship, and traditional values which Malachy represents, and the fabric of their lives unravels, then shreds.

McCabe creates wonderful, understandable characters facing conflicts not unlike those many of us face, and voices so real we can recognize even their inflections.By deliberately evoking the feeling that if only we were there we might be able to help, he cleverly involves the reader in the action.For a teacher, however, he may dredge up real nightmares--of rude or surly students, impatient and demanding parents, classes for which more preparation was essential, compromises made because there was simply Not Enough Time, along with pedagogical conflicts between strict standards and flexible, creative learning.All of these issues come into play here, and they will keep you thinking long after you finish the book.Mary Whipple

James Joyce's Bizarre Step-Child
Mccabe's sing-song writing style (hard to create and pleasing to the eye) is opposite to the the dreary depressing material, he is one of the most creative users of the spontaneous stream-of-consciousness techniques, helping the reader enter the head of two characters, slowly descending into madness and mental illness, through complex opposites. There are a few moments early on in the novel of such expressed beauty and happiness for both characters and their significant others, it makes the endings even more devestating. Joyce would be proud of McCabe's seductively warped stream-of-consciousness

Excellent
One of the best books I have ever read - totally compelling read

Warning !
An amazing book, it kept me in my room for hours straight with its perfectly real version of Ireland. Its highs were dizzying, hilarious, but its lows - be prepared ! This is something I noticed in none of thereviews, but it's TOTALLY depressing. ... Read more

Product Description
Josie Keenan, who has returned to her provincial hometown, and factory worker Sadie Rooney, who dreams of leaving, strike up a friendship that is fueled by their hopes to better their lives and their need to confront difficult truths. Reprint. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

IRELAND DURING THE BEATLE YEARS
This is a brilliantly written book that gives a literary portrayal of an Irish town.In reading this, one gets a feel for the places, political issues and people of Ireland in the early 1960s.

This author also has a flair for providing full descriptions of his characters.One of my favorite parts in the book was when he described one character as having a Beatle moptop "like George Harrison" (the youngest Beatle who was also known for having the longest hair during the Moptop Era) and making Beatle references.I loved the nod to George Harrison's beautiful wavy hair.(The Beatles with the exception of Ringo were of Irish extraction).

All in all, an excellent work and a "yeah, yeah, yeah!"

The heart of Ireland unvailed
Patrick McCabe is one of the more extroadinary writers to emmerge fromIreland in recent times, anybody who experienced his sadistic tale, TheButcher's Boy will understand what I mean by this. In Carn, he beautifullyunvails his microcosm of Irish life through the inhabitants of one town.McCabe traces the town through poverty, prosperity and finally utter chaos.Blending together a stong Irish dialect, McCabe tells a tale that may soundfamilar or completely alien. Definately a good read, especially for thosepolitical types. ... Read more

Product Description
Pat McNab, driven by rage and despair, goes on a rampage after killing his mother and ends up murdering more than fifty people. Or is his whiskey-addled mind merely imagining these murders?

Customer Reviews (8)

Interesting "dark" psychological story...
OK...this is my first exposure to Patrick McCabe, and it's because I was at the library and just happened to pick this up...Emerald Germs of Ireland.It's a rather dark, morbid story, but one that I found strangely fascinating...

Pat McNab is a 45 year old guy who lives (or I should say "lived") with his mother.She's a domineering sort, and Pat was raised in a somewhat feminine fashion.But one day he cracks and ends up killing his mother by "blunt force trauma".To cover up the crime, he buries her out in the backyard.Of course, the small Irish town he lives in notices her absence, and Pat explains it away as her having left to do some traveling.That matricide event starts the unraveling of what's left of his sanity, and also starts a series of murders (and garden additions) needed to prevent others from "discovering" his previous crime.You're never quite sure what's real and what's not in his world, but it's best not to become part of it...

Many books like this would paint everything in a dark, sinister fashion.McCabe goes more for the comically absurd, and slowly paints a picture of McNab's background with each new encounter.While the subject matter isn't something you'd find funny, I couldn't help but laugh at some of the scenes that he painted for the reader.And once the magical mushrooms were introduced, you really didn't have a clue as to where things were going (or what was real vs. imagined).I'm intrigued enough to put him on my list of authors I need to catch up on...

Moving on.......
After reading "Breakfast on Pluto" and not liking it,I thought I'd try something else by McCabe.I soon found this was much the same kind of writing ;I plodded to page 180 ,then packed it in. If dark,troubled,tortured,twisted and morose fiction that doesn't seem to go anywhere is what one enjoys; there's pleanty of it here.I note that other reviewers have rated it very high or very low;which to me doesn't say that it was good or bad ;but that some liked it while others didn't.This can often be determined rather quickly by opening a book and reading a couple of pages at random.

Smart black humor
This is about as dark as you can get: a funny tale of an accidental serial killer.Accidental, you say?What could you mean?This poor man does not want to be a serial killer.Blood, guts and gore do not arouse him.He simply wants to be left alone and kills the people who get in the way of his dreams.Ah, black humor...So wonderful and so misunderstood!

Greatest novel ever written.
This book was truly wonderful. A genuine masterpiece of dark comedy. I've read a few of Pat McCabe's books, and I have enjoyed this one the most. I read the other reviews and was abhorred at the reactions. I encourage potential readers to dismiss these reviews. Pat McCabe is a special author, either you love him or you hate him. These people hated him mostly because of "The Butcher Boy." I'd like to inform them that "The Butcher Boy" was indeed a great book, but it was also a different book. This is distinctly different from his other books. I ask you to just read the first chapter. If you don't like it, put it down. But if you do like it, no one will be able to pry it from your hands.

Why...why was this book written???
I read about 8 books a month, all different genres and have done this for most of my life.As a voracious reader I have tastes that range from the sublime to the ridiculous, but this book fit in none of those categories. It was not "An American Psycho" which of course depicted an amusing protagonist with 'an axe to grind'a cultural icon necessary for the books purpose. I am intimately familiar with Irish sensibility and this represented none of it. Your man in this book was a non character and not amusing in the least, to follow this dullard's progress through the book was probably the worst fate he dealt. ... Read more

Product Description
Meet Pat McNab, forty-five years old, often to be found endlessly puffing smokes and propping up the counter of Sullivan's Select Bar or sitting on his mother's knee, both of them singing away together like some ridiculous two-headed human juke box. But that was all before the story really begins. "Emerald Germs of Ireland" is, in essence, Pat McNab's post-matricide year. This is another great romp from the master of black comedy. '"Emerald Germs" is an extraordinary confection. Melancholy, nasty, and extremely funny' - Jane Shilling, "Sunday Telegraph". 'A mesmerising, disturbing and sometimes wildly funny book' - Carolyn Hart, "Marie Claire", Book of the Month. ... Read more

Product Description
You wouldn't expect to find a mature woman of twenty-eight years of age mixed up with a bunch of swingers in a small town like Barntrosna. But that's exactly what happened according to Walter Bunyan. And he should know, she was his wife. As for Declan Coyningham - there wasn't a holier boy in all of Barntrosna - you couldn't move in town without finding a bit of him in your path or under a hedge. And what exactly did come over Noreen Tiernan that made her shriek to wake the dead as she left the main street of the village in a Morris Minor all decked in pink and blue? Patrick McCabe's prose is as brilliantly macabre as ever. In scenes of disarming inventiveness, "Mondo Desperado" will make you howl with laughter from first unnerving page to last. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

You Have to Be Irish
From the collectible art on the cover to its take on national stereotypes, Mondo Desperado! provides a look at Ireland's sacred cows:

Depraved, voyeuristic schoolmasters!
Student Priests!
Delinquent Irish Nurses!

Patrick McCabe has a way of starting out ghastly and inducing compassion for the characters by the end.Especially like the bit on clubbing in "Hot Nights At The Gogo Lounge!!!"Not everyone can get away with so many exclamation marks.

Someday this book will be the basis of a sleeper hit movie.
... Read more

Product Description
A reference book which covers systems of divination. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

EXCELLENT source of Information!
VERY detailed descriptions with plenty of pictures. I thought I knew all about certain things, this book taught me much more on almost every subject than any other book of its type. Many would disagree with me on this - I recommend this book be offered to pre-teens/teens who show an interest in the ancient ways. ... Read more

Product Description
Patrick McCabe has long been recognized as a writer of rare talent and unique voice, whose vision of the world is so distinctive that "McCabesque" has become an adjective with multiple meanings, including "exquisitely, beautifully, mad in the head!"

He was a Booker Prize finalist for The Butcher Boy, which won the Irish Times Aer Lingus/Irish Literature Prize for Fiction and was made into a motion picture directed by Neil Jordan and cowritten by McCabe and Jordan. He was again a Booker Prize finalist for Breakfast on Pluto, which won the Spirit of Life Arts/Sunday Independent Irish Literature Award and was a number one international bestseller.

McCabe has been described as "the lodestone of new Irish fiction" (Wall Street Journal), "a dark. genius of incongruity and the grotesque" (Sunday Observer) and "one of Ireland's finest living writers" (New York Times Book Review).

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune commented on McCabe's "remarkable...ability to induce compassion for the unlikeliest people," and in Mondo Desperado: A Serial Novel, that ability and the full range of his "grotesque genius" (Marie Claire) combine to produce a brilliant, macabre' dementedly funny and surreally imagined fiction of intertwined narratives set in a small Irish town. McCabe himself has described Mondo Desperado as being "like Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio--on drugs."

In his mondo tales of the insular town of Barntrosna, McCabe assembles a distinctly Irish crew of odd and unusual inhabitants who live on and regularly cross, often unconsciously, the border between fantasy and reality. In "Hot Nights at the Go-Go Lounge," Larry Bunyan is certain his demure wife is secretly out at night with deadbeat swingers, shooting drugs and having wild sex, while in "I Ordained the Devil," the Bishop of Barntrosna confesses that his ordination of Father Packie Cooley was really an ordination of His Satanic Majesty.

Another Barntrosna resident, Dr. John Joe Parkes, discovers "The Valley of the Flying Jennets," the secret place in the mountains created by his Dr. Frankenstein--type medical ancestor where his horrible, mutated genetic failures live. In the concluding "Forbidden Love of Noreen Tiernan," Noreen escapes Barntrosna, goes to London for nursing school, finds a lesbian lover, and teams up with her to rob and terrorize London until her mother, boyfriend and parish priest bring Noreen back home.

With sly wit, characteristic, brilliant blending of sadness and humor and macabre genius, Mondo Desperado is a wonderfully imagined work of fiction--McCabe's most dazzling yet--from a truly original literary talent.Amazon.com Review
You may not have heard of Phildy Hackball, but thanks to PatrickMcCabe--and, we're told, to "an ingenue of an English publisher who hadnever been in Ireland before"--you're about to get your chance. Hackball isthe putative author of Mondo Desperado, a collection of shortstories that explore the underbelly of provincial Barntrosna. And what anunderbelly it is! McCabe's mouthpiece delivers all the graphic details onDeclan Coyningham, the holiest boy in town by far, who seems headed for alife in the church until the locals decide that his inflated prospects needfurther inflating (literally). Then there's Cora Bunyan, the narrator'swife, who's been enjoying one too many Hot Nights at the Go-Go Lounge. Andlet us not overlook a cameo by the actual Bruce Lee, who importunesHackball to be his ghost writer. Some would have it that the kung fumaestro is just a waiter from the Red Lotus Temple restaurant in Mullingar,but the narrator is nonetheless determined to maintain the highest literary standards:

I wish my story to be as near perfect as possible. To outline and candidlydelineate not just the background to my years of friendship with Bruce Leebut that of the martial arts as we have come to know them--the heists, the head-busting she-wolves, the drug lords, the torn trousers, the pieces of other films that get stuck in by accident. And until I have that story told to my satisfaction, I see no point in concerning myself unduly as towhether I receive the occasional letter from a publisher or not.

Customer Reviews (7)

Truth Masquerading as Absurdity
I love Patrick McCabe's books.I really thought "The Butcher Boy," "Breakfast on Pluto," and "The Dead School" were exceptional so I knew I would love "Mondo Desperado" as well and I was right.This collection of stories is as wacky as they come (maybe even as wacky as "Breakfast on Pluto") but they are terrific and McCabe's alter ego, Phildy Hackball, is a character you won't soon forget.

Even Pat Cork's opening "Appreciation" of Phildy's decision to cast the citizens of Barntrosna as characters in a low-budget, B-movie (reminiscent of those the boys used to sneak out of school to see) is hilarious.And the citizens of Barntrosna don't let Phildy down.Time and again, they prove themselves more than worthy of any B-moviemaker's attention.

There is nothing quite as shocking in "Mondo Desperado" as the heinous crimes that took place in McCabe's masterpiece, "The Butcher Boy" and the citizens of Barntrosna aren't quite as off-the-wall hysterical as Patrick Braden, star of "Breakfast on Pluto," but "Mondo Desperado" does prove time and time again just how desperate the world really is.

There is the priest who believes he has ordained Satan himself, the Barntrosna girl who finds lesbian love in London and most of all, there is Larry Bunyan, the protagonist of "Hot Nights at the Go-Go Lounge."Larry, for reasons both he and I don't quite understand, believes his rather frumpy wife, Cora, is having more than one affair behind his back.Larry is overcome with disbelief, but still, he says, he really has to hand it to Cora, for who would have believed it.

What McCabe's characters share in common, and the thread that ties these stories together, is the pathetic quality of their ludicrous plights.Plights they have, for the most part, created themselves.We don't want to be like them, but we can't help but see little bits and pieces of ourselves in them and it makes us laugh or cry...depending on good a sense of humor one has.

I don't think "Mondo Desperado" is quite Patrick McCabe at his finest.I think you need "The Butcher Boy" or "Breakfast on Pluto" for that, but "Mondo Desperado" comes very close.It's satiric, it's wacky, it's ludicrous, it's truth masquerading as absurdity.If you haven't yet read Patrick McCabe, "Mondo Desperado" might be a great place to start.

Baring All in Barntrosna
From behind the shield of his narrative's narrator, Phildy Hackball, Patrick McCabe hazards forth once again to peel away the myths we'd still like to believe about Ireland and about human beings.It's the sort of expose he's done before, masterfully, in the Butcher Boy and again in The Dead School.Unfortunately, for this reader, Mondo Desperado lacks the narrative focus, depth of insight, and most importantly, any shred of sympathy for the human curiosities on display.By telling his tales through an eccentric narrator, McCabe allows his own eccentric voice too much free rein.The lack of discipline is telling: the verbal riffs are not as sharp, the flashes of embarassing insight not so difficult to ignore.Ultimately the humour, black as ever with McCabe, fails to be funny because the pillory is overcrowded.Barntrosna becomes little more than a roadside attraction; the serial of stories a sort of "Failte Isteach" in a funhouse mirror.I failed to find the fun though.

A Desperate World Indeed
Irish writer, Patrick McCabe seems to be someone whose work you either love or hate with no in between.Anyone who has enjoyed his other books, such as The Butcher Boy, Breakfast on Pluto or The Dead School, is going to love Mondo Desperado.The uninitiated are going to be in for a surprise with McCabe's highly distinctive voice and style.It is black comedy with a capital "B," but it is black comedy of the highest order.In Mondo Desperado, McCabe builds on his earlier themes of life in the rural Irish borderlands.This book, set in the fictional town of Barntrosna, is the perfect vehicle for McCabe to showcase his ironic observations of the modern-day world.

The narrator of Mondo Desperado, which is structured like a series of short stories, is Phildy Hackball who takes us on a tour of Barntrosna.Although Phildy describes his major interests as being the cinema and drinking with his friends, his real passion lies in writing weird and wonderful stories based on his own unique observations of the residents of Barntrosna.With Hackball as narrator, McCabe allows himself carte blanche to let his absurdly comic imagination run wild.The results are dark, surreal, hilarious and outrageous.The tone of Mondo Desperado is in perfect keeping with its absurd subject matter.Hackball is a narrator who is never afraid of taking the liberty of using ten adjectives to describe something when one would have done very nicely.He gives us a view of life that is nothing less than a surrealistic riot, a panoply of color and activity concealed beneath the facade of the average Irish town.

It is this very absurdity of the mundane and the ordinary that gives McCabe his unique vision of the world and sets his work apart from that of other writers.Although the events described in Mondo Desperado are surrealistic in the extreme, each one is firmly rooted in reality.We begin by identifying with the characters so completely and then McCabe, in his genius, takes them to the blackest reaches of their soul and inflicts upon them the most terrible and bizarre of circumstances.These stories of a stifling, oppressive society, of overbearing mothers and hard drinking fathers, of hormonally-crazed young people driven slightly insane are, frighteningly, only a small step away from the world in which each of us lives our day-to-day life.

This is McCabe's unique talent and it is a talent he has developed to the fullest.He can make us laugh out loud and, at the same time, make us take a serious look at our prejudices, our stereotypes, our beliefs, our lives.Mondo Desperado is a book that deserves to be read by lovers of black comedy, lovers of good literature and anyone with an interest in modern-day rural Ireland.It is a wild roller coaster ride to the very edge of consciousness through a desperate world, indeed.

Entertaining but mired in excessive language
I like quirky characters, odd scenarios and clever plot twists, which is what is contained in Mondo Desperado, but the language employed in the book takes away from the story. McCabe has a cast of oddballs with unusual stories. However, I fond myself re-reading sentences frequently because of his tangents and run-ons. While I can appreciate the conversational manner of characters, I found the style to be overkill that took away from my reading.

On the plus side, the stories were funny and unexpected. None were predictable and many were downright outrageous. I especially liked the last (and longest) of the stories which involved a beautiful and selfless young nurse-in-training who becomes an outlaw submissive lesbian.

McCabe has a fine imagination that incorporates some of the underbelly of society with a lightheartedness that not many authors can do. He is reminiscent of Vonnegut in his ability to create entertaining, unusual stories, but Vonnegut reads effortlessly, which, unfortunately, isn't the case with this book.

Three stars, but streamlined language would have made it four.

mucho disappointment
this is so bad compared to the butcher boy. he did write well up til now, even though it got weaker as he went along. i wish we had the old patmccabe, the one that could write and tell stories but instead we get a poor attempt of impressing us with language that fails. this book has thefeeling of revenge without reason. ... Read more

Product Description

Conceived in a moment of mad passion by a randy Irish priest and his temporary housekeeper -- and abandoned on a doorstep in a Rinso box as an infant -- her ladyship "Pussy" (né Patrick) Braden grew up fabulous and escaped tiny Tyreelin, Ireland, to start life anew in London. In blousy tops and satin miniskirts she plies her trade as a transvestite rent boy on Picadilly's Meat Rack, risking life and limb among the city's flotsam and jetsam. But it is the 1970s, and fear haunts the streets of London and Belfast -- and as radioactive history approaches critical mass, the coming explosion of violence and tragedy may well blow Pussy's fragile soul asunder.