In The Butcher Boy, Patrick McCabe created an unforgettable protagonist and narrator, a troubled Irish boy forced to come of age too quickly at the height of the Cold War. In Breakfast On Pluto, he's crafted an equally memorable lead, though one far removed from that novel's Boy's Life-gone-wrong adventures. Unlike Butcher's Francie Brady, Pluto's Patrick Braden is a survivor, if only just barely. A flamboyant transvestite prostitute fathered by a Catholic priest in an Irish border town, Braden's indeterminate identity may seem too obvious a symbol of a divided Ireland's own violent identity crisis. McCabe, however, never allows this to get in the way. By turning Braden, who renames himself "Patty Pussy," into a larger-than-life but three-dimensional character, McCabe gets to have his too-obvious symbolism and his compelling novel too. Troubled by his parentage, Braden goes looking for love and seems to find it before, in great tragic-queen tradition, losing it again and again against the backdrop of flaring political tensions in the early '70s. In Breakfast On Pluto, McCabe has taken what could easily have been a stereotypical character and rendered him tremendously sympathetic and believable. Braden is a consistently funny narrator, but his alternately bitchy and moony storytelling always betrays a beautifully melancholy, fragile human beneath. Through Braden, McCabe effortlessly makes the political seem personal in a touching novel that's difficult to forget.