McCabe, Patrick

Average customer rating:

Banana
I was so looking forward to this book.
One of my favorite books
Muck, pluck, mick, pigs
so you want to know what it's like...

The Butcher Boy
Patrick McCabe
Manufacturer: Delta
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Breakfast on Pluto: A Novel
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Winterwood: A Novel

ASIN: 0385312377
Release Date: 1994-08-01

Amazon.com

"I was thinking how right ma was -- Mrs. Nugent all smiles when she met us and how are you getting on Mrs and young Francis are you both well? . . .what she was really saying was: Ah hello Mrs Pig how are you and look Philip do you see what's coming now -- The Pig Family!"

This is a precisely crafted, often lyrical, portrait of the descent into madness of a young killer in small-town Ireland. "Imagine Huck Finn crossed with Charlie Starkweather," said The Washington Post. Short-listed for the Bram Stoker Award and England's prestigious Booker Prize.

Book Description

"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.

Customer Reviews:

Banana.......2007-06-19

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........2007-04-10

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.

One of my favorite books.......2006-10-16

I don't want to give too much away, but I was really surprised by the main character's take on reality. When you finally realize what is really happening, you will be shocked.

Muck, pluck, mick, pigs.......2006-06-07

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.

so you want to know what it's like..........2005-03-16

As a stark raving looney myself (albeit a medicated one) I could understand Francie's deep obsessions and inability to grasp reality more than some. This book touched me deeply and the sometimes horrific, selfish, and often childish aspects of insanity are captured wonderfully. If you truly want to delve into mental illness trash your copies of Catcher and the Rye and read this. Obsession, paranoia, hallucinations, crushing despair... it's all in here and tossed about with the wicked humor that keeps us alive at times. I don't know if Mr. McCabe knew what he was tapping into but he did it successfully!

Average customer rating:

Changing traditions in Ireland
Disappointed
Chilly Scenes of Winter

Winterwood: A Novel
Patrick McCabe
Manufacturer: Bloomsbury USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1596911638
Release Date: 2007-01-23

Book Description

Once, Redmond Hatch was in heaven, married to the lovely Catherine and father to enchanting daughter Immy. But then he took them both to Winterwood. And it would never be the same again…

In Patrick McCabe’s spellbinding new novel, nothing—and no one—are ever quite what they seem. When Hatch, devoted husband and father, revisits the secluded mountains where he grew up, he meets Auld Pappie Ned. While he claims to be just a harmless local fiddler, a teller of tall tales, Ned sets off a cataclysmic chain of events in Redmond’s life. From the mysterious disappearance of Redmond’s daughter to the reluctant remembrance of a troubled boyhood to secret glimpses into an unstable marriage, everything soon spirals out of control. Narrated with hypnotic precision and fractured lyricism, Winterwood is a disturbing and unforgettable tale of love, death and identity from a masterful novelist.

Customer Reviews:

Changing traditions in Ireland.......2007-05-30

The protagonist in Irish-born author Patrick McCabe's latest novel, WINTERWOOD, is a journalist whose roots lie in rural Ireland. In 1981, Redmond Hatch is assigned to return to his childhood home, Slievenageeha, to report on the changing traditions in Ireland.

There, Redmond's comfortable life begins to unravel. By happenstance, Redmond arrives during the festival celebration, an annual event that dredges up old-style britches, dancing, fiddling and storytelling prowess. Redmond is guided to Auld Pappie, the fiddler extraordinaire, who promises an interview with Redmond after his performance. In the old language, he toasts, "To you good health, young man of the mountain. Welcome Home."

They remain in the pub talking about the old days until late in the night. Pappie brings up stories of Redmond's own family that Redmond had pushed far into the recesses of his mind. He's too comfortable with his loving wife, Catherine, and their daughter, Imogen, to drag up painful childhood memories.

Ned is Auld Pappie's proper name but the latter suits him best, Redmond decides upon closer association with the man. The stories he tells are about card-playing, wild women, cattle raids, horse racing and ceilidhs that last eternally; it's obvious that some of these tales are fabricated. One evening, Ned's mood turns quite dark. He picks up an old book, THE HEART'S ENCHANTMENT, given to Annamarie Gordon by John Olson in 1963. Annamarie was the love of Ned's life, but she had been courted by another local man. Ned's next story is of revenge against Olson, whom he followed to the United States, stabbed and nearly beat to death. Redmond realizes that Ned has a mean streak and may be delusional.

Redmond considers his family and marriage to be a gift that should be cherished. During times of financial struggles, he's both father and mother to Immy while Catherine works during the day. However, his marriage --- and precious moments with Immy --- comes to an unfortunate end when he finds Catherine in bed with another man.

Redmond becomes obsessed with his interviews with Auld Pappie, who has been charged with and convicted of sexually molesting a young boy in the village. Ned is sent to prison and dies there. Redmond's thoughts turn to the ways he had been manipulated by Ned, even intimately, and his mind clutches for good memories in his life. Immy must be rescued from her citified existence and brought back to Winterwood, where life and stories are all good. He hatches a plan to meet her and bring her home. His mind is centered on this sole act, detaching him from reality.

Redmond continues to recall the chilling tales that Ned related, taking them for his own realities. Rohrman's Confectionary, with the sickening smell of spearmint surrounding the property, is the site where Ned's crime had been committed. Redmond takes the place for his own and spends an increasing amount of time at Winterwood, secluding himself there with his memories. Catherine becomes his focus again when he learns that her husband has died. Winterwood is where she'll recant her distrust and be his first love again; their missing daughter may be the tie that will bind them.

Stories from childhoods long forgotten, dredged to light by a master storyteller and miscreant, wreck a modern man's life and send him into dark places in his mind from which he cannot escape. The interviews with the fiddler bring terror, hate, love, madness, psychotic delusions and fame. Is the price worth it for a return to Winterwood? The novel is chilling yet demands to be read to its end.

--- Reviewed by Judy Gigstad

Disappointed.......2007-04-02

A glum story. Lacking description of today's Irish
scene. Too much tragedy well written. No explanations
for human perfidy. The point escapes me.

Chilly Scenes of Winter.......2007-02-13

Patrick McCabe's haunting novel "Winterwood" begins charmingly enough with our narrator Redmond Hatch regailing of his time revisiting his old mountain home in Ireland and reveling in the tall tales of the proud local drunk, Ned "Auld Pappie" Strange. There's an almost instant undercurrent of dread to the storytelling as we quickly become aware that neither Ned nor Edmond are going to be very reliable narrators, both soon overcome with the dark secrets and the Banshee ghosts of their pasts. Ned, it seems, my not be so innocent a weaver of tales, and Redmond is crippled by a crumbling marriage to a woman he is madly in love with and a trouble childhood he can't seem to escape.

McCabe is a master of writing dialogue in local dialect, as I often found myself reading out loud the early stories of Ned Strange and speaking in a rather effective Irish accent.

Even more so, McCabe is master of stark, economical writing. Shocking details come quick and fast, presented nonchalantly as the story progresses so that they soon fester in the mind of both the reader and the narrator until they creep back into the narrative in horrifying ways.

There are times when the narration becomes a challenge to follow, as the book becomes rife with name-changes, locale-switching, and no apparent chronology to the order of events. Even the chapter titles and time and place headers become deceptive, as once lost inside Redmond's head, all becomes jumbled in half-truths, lies, exaggerations, under-statments, and grotesque speculations.

Still, McCabe is able to ground things with simple passages that are both lyrical and haunting in their slim descriptive power. By the time you finish visiting "Winterwood" you are left with the singularly unnerving feeling of being chilled to the bone. Hell, it seems, is a cold, cold place where the devil can't wait to shelter you.

Average customer rating:

This is an unusual story about a darling person.
What a mess!
Paddy Pussy fan
The island's united; the people divided
charming and disturbing

Breakfast on Pluto: A Novel
Patrick McCabe
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Breakfast on Pluto { Original Soundtrack }
Carn
On the Edge

ASIN: 0060931582

Amazon.com

Patrick McCabe hit pay dirt with his third novel, The Butcher Boy, which was short-listed for the 1992 Booker Prize, filmed by Neil Jordan, and acclaimed as "a masterpiece of literary ventriloquism." In his fifth, Breakfast on Pluto, also on the Booker shortlist, McCabe produces another inimitable voice to amuse and infuriate, mimicking perfectly the overwrought, near-hysterical style of a character whose emotional processes were cruelly halted somewhere around the age of 14, and whose tale requires English literature's highest concentration of exclamation marks.

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

Book 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.

Customer Reviews:

This is an unusual story about a darling person........2007-02-16

I fell in love with this book and film. Absolutely could not put it down. So well done and so original.

What a mess!.......2006-11-17

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.......2006-11-10

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.

The island's united; the people divided.......2006-08-04

Mad Ireland has its weather and its writers still. Among them some of the best: Joyce in novels, Yeats in poetry, and Shaw in plays. Along comes Patrick McCabe with a good challenge to the best of them and in a more modern mode. Because of the density of the writing and the many ellipses, you are better off seeing the movie first (the way I did) and then reading the book. Both movie and book are worth while independent of each other, but the both together are simply great in story, plot, character, and impact. The background of the Irish troubles helps clarify lots of Irish history and makes us want to get the foe out of Ireland as soon as possible. The troubles also help get the author out of the mid-plot sag that often afflicts modern novels. The frame in the book gives us just enough reason to suspect Pussy's insane and therefore unreliable as a narrator and that gets us thinking about what's real and what isn't. And the language approaches the redemptive quality of true art by bringing the soul of man to God. What's next for McCabe? I can't wait.

charming and disturbing .......2006-05-09

Often, when I'm reading a book or watching a movie, I'll think about the villain or the eccentric character or the wacky character - they're always so interesting, and yet, rarely are we given a privileged look at the *why* of their lives. Why are they so different from the rest of us? Why do they dress like that? Why do they act the way they do? Patrick McCabe is an author who is concerned with the why.

Patrick "Pussy" Braden, the hero(ine) of McCabe's Breakfast on Pluto, is an Irish Transvestite, who - believe it or not - is just looking for the simple life. Sure, she likes silky jackets and false eyelashes. But all Pussy *really* wants is a sweet little home; a strong, masculine husband; and a loving family. Unfortunately, her desires are complicated by the deteriorating social system in her small, Irish hometown; by violent IRA attacks; by her dysfunctional childhood; and - of course - by her sexuality.

As with McCabe's The Butcher Boy, Breakfast on Pluto is a fascinating exploration of the life of a social deviant. Once again, McCabe masterfully captures the humorous and extraordinarily idiosyncratic voice of his protagonist, and the combination of Pussy's charismatic narration and her tragic life story make for another bittersweet novel. Breakfast on Pluto is at once hilarious and heartbreaking.

If I were to compare the 2 texts, I'd have to say that Butcher Boy is the superior; for one thing, it's more fleshed out than the very brief Breakfast on Pluto. But, if you enjoyed Butcher Boy, chances are, you will also enjoy this work by McCabe.

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IRELAND DURING THE BEATLE YEARS
The heart of Ireland unvailed

Carn
Patrick Mccabe
Manufacturer: Delta
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Breakfast on Pluto: A Novel
The Butcher Boy
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Emerald Germs of Ireland

ASIN: 0385315856
Release Date: 1997-01-01

Book Description

Patrick McCabe, whom the San Francisco Chronicle called "one of the most brilliant writers ever to come out of Ireland," presents another compelling novel of small-town Ireland that leaves its indelible mark on the canon of classic fiction. Carn is the story of two women; Josie Keenan, who returns to Carn, Ireland, the provincial hometown she once left behind, and Sadie Rooney, a factory worker who dreams of leaving. As the two women strike up a friendship--fueled by hopes to better their lives, yet inextricably tied to the tenuous fate of Carn--each must confront the hard truths of her past and future. And despite its own attempt to thrive, the town itself cannot escape the daily reminders of Ireland's endless legacy of violence and unrest.

Written in the raw, unsparing prose that marks McCabe's fiction, Carn is the timeless story of a small town struggling to break away from its bleak past, and the lives of two women aching to escape the forces that shaped them.

Customer Reviews:

IRELAND DURING THE BEATLE YEARS.......2003-10-27

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.......1998-08-23

Patrick McCabe is one of the more extroadinary writers to emmerge from Ireland in recent times, anybody who experienced his sadistic tale, The Butcher's Boy will understand what I mean by this. In Carn, he beautifully unvails 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 sound familar or completely alien. Definately a good read, especially for those political types.

Average customer rating:

Interesting "dark" psychological story...
Moving on.......
Smart black humor
Greatest novel ever written.
Why...why was this book written???

Emerald Germs of Ireland
Patrick McCabe
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Breakfast on Pluto: A Novel
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ASIN: 006095678X
Release Date: 2002-03-05

Book 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? </p>Reality collides with fantasy with dizzying impact as Pat reflects on the long-gone days with Mommy, while fending off the persistent interferences of his small-town neighbors: the puritanical Mrs. Tubridy; that irascible seller of turf, the Turf Man; Sgt. "Kojak" Foley, and other unwanted snoops who could soon come to regret their inquisitive, nose-poking ways....</p>

Customer Reviews:

Interesting "dark" psychological story..........2006-09-30

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..............2003-09-15

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.......2002-06-18

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........2002-04-05

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???.......2001-05-07

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.

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Truth Masquerading as Absurdity
Baring All in Barntrosna
A Desperate World Indeed
Entertaining but mired in excessive language
mucho disappointment

Mondo Desperado: A Serial Novel
Patrick McCabe
Manufacturer: HarperCollins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Carn
Breakfast on Pluto: A Novel
The Dead School

ASIN: 0060194618

Amazon.com

You may not have heard of Phildy Hackball, but thanks to Patrick McCabe--and, we're told, to "an ingenue of an English publisher who had never been in Ireland before"--you're about to get your chance. Hackball is the putative author of Mondo Desperado, a collection of short stories that explore the underbelly of provincial Barntrosna. And what an underbelly it is! McCabe's mouthpiece delivers all the graphic details on Declan Coyningham, the holiest boy in town by far, who seems headed for a life in the church until the locals decide that his inflated prospects need further inflating (literally). Then there's Cora Bunyan, the narrator's wife, who's been enjoying one too many Hot Nights at the Go-Go Lounge. And let us not overlook a cameo by the actual Bruce Lee, who importunes Hackball to be his ghost writer. Some would have it that the kung fu maestro is just a waiter from the Red Lotus Temple restaurant in Mullingar, but the narrator is nonetheless determined to maintain the highest literary standards: <blockquote> I wish my story to be as near perfect as possible. To outline and candidly delineate not just the background to my years of friendship with Bruce Lee but 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 to whether I receive the occasional letter from a publisher or not. </blockquote> McCabe's follow-up to Breakfast on Pluto (which made the Booker Prize shortlist) confirms him as one of Ireland's most distinctive and inimitable voices. The stories in Mondo Desperado seem to emanate from some parallel universe, but with their diseased take on national stereotypes, they provide an incisive, viciously cruel commentary on some of Ireland's most sacred cows. And in the end, Phildy Hackball is a wonderfully naive drinking companion, forever leading us up the wrong alleyway. Each time you think you're safely at home, another satiric grenade goes off in your face. Read, laugh, and be afraid. --Alan Stewart

Book 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.

Customer Reviews:

Truth Masquerading as Absurdity.......2002-05-12

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.......2001-07-09

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.......2000-12-04

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.......2000-10-17

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.......2000-08-17

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 pat mccabe, 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 the feeling of revenge without reason.

Average customer rating:

Breakfast on Pluto tie-in
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Binding: Paperback

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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.</p>

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nice to have another novel from mccabe, but...

Has the sun gone out? Will it stay that way?

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Release Date: 2004-11-09

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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.</p>

Customer Reviews:

Irish as All Get Out.......2004-08-13

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.......2004-06-04

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..........2004-02-19

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.

Has the sun gone out? Will it stay that way?.......2004-01-31

Here McCabe conjures the same heart-wrenching sorrow of DEAD SCHOOL and BUTCHER BOY and manages to deftly mix it with the humor of EMERALD GERMS. This is a modern master at the height of his powers. He breaks your heart, then cracks you up. And the words are flowing like you wouldn't believe; amazing sentences here; he almost makes it look easy! But his quotes of Gogol throughout are apt; this novel deserves to be up there with DEAD SOULS. Just bursting as it is with all the classic themes, and each so elegantly and freshly handled: the young intellectual's quest for enlightenment; the artist's journey (as a struggling novelist and film-maker, I was particularly moved); the crazy misfit in possession of the truth yet ignored by society; the young man hopelessly in love with a girl who doesn't deserve it. Sound sentimental? Well, McCabe has such a capacity horror, for detailing evil, he's able to turn around and wring the truth out of high emotion and sentiment. "Sentimental" shouldn't be a dirty word, but so often it is because "love of mother," "longing for father," or "yearning for meaning" are so ineptly and mawkishly handled - then the sentiments become an insult to the true feeling. But McCabe grounds his story in the terror of the Irish Civil War - you know he knows what he's talking about. And he makes it hurt so good.

An Irish Feast by the Inimitable Patrick McCabe!.......2004-01-24

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-like meanderings 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!

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