Patrick McCabe: Breakfast On Pluto

[Fantasy Moon]

I just finished Breakfast on Pluto by Patrick McCabe last night. I liked the story, a transvestite prostitute would interest me after all, but after the first few chapters the writing style went from amusing to annoying rather fast. I kind of had to force myself to read through it, but just because I want to do a comparison for when the movie is released. It wasn't that long of a read with only like 200 pages so it wasn't that bad to finish it.

 

[Shade]

All of McCabe's novels are a bit like that - or at least the three I've read are. The Butcher Boy and The Dead School share with Breakfast on Pluto an interest in highly eccentric narrative voice and grotesque violence (or as one reviewer called it, "grand Gaelic guignol"), intricately intertwined. I think Breakfast on Pluto is the most annoying though: Patrick 'Pussy' Braden's voice being just a little too much.

The Butcher Boy is well worth reading, a sort of Wasp Factory of the 90s, and The Dead School, which I'm just over halfway through, seems to me to be the best of his I've read so far. It's a tale of teachers in mid-20th century Ireland who are about (I am pretty sure) to lose the plot and their connections to reality. The voice is amusing but not overdone: or not as long as you don't read too much at once, that is.

Hello there boys and girls and I hope you are all well. The story I have for you this morning is all about two teachers and the things they got up to in the days gone by. In begins in the year of Our Lord 1956 in a maternity hospital in Ireland when a wee fat chubby lad by the name of Malachy fell out of Cissie who was married to Packie Dudgeon the biggest bollocks in the town.

His new novel is Winterwood, and it seems to be a much more sombre affair from the blurb (ie still full of horrible things, but not told in a playful style this time). He's reading from it at the Belfast Festival tonight so I'll go along and see him.

 

[Ashlee]

Did you go Shade? I bet that would be amazing.
I love The Butcher Boy. I wasn't really fond of Breakfast On Pluto though. I have a few of his books I'm yet to read.

 

[Fantasy Moon]

I should try some other works sometime. Breakfast On Pluto turned out to be something that I loved the movie adaptation way more than the original novel. That doesn't seem to happen very often!

Winterwood, eh? I'll remember that for future browsing.

 

[Ashlee]

Yeah, I only read the book because I heard Cillian was doing the film, he's my favourite actor. I like the film.

 

[Shade]

Yes I did go along to the reading. He's a very engaging speaker, intense and serious but also very funny - rather like his books, I suppose. I got him to sign my copy of Winterwood and told him how much I had enjoyed The Dead School: he said "this is a better book than The Dead School." Well, he would say that, wouldn't he? But I'm halfway through it and it certainly is his most unsettling and creepy book to date (or of the ones I've read at least). The sewn-in red bookmark keeps reminding me of a ribbon of blood each time I open the book...