Breakfast on Pluto

With wonderful delicacy and subtle insight and intimation, McCabe creates Mr Patrick “Pussy” Braden, the endearingly hopeful hero(ine) whose gutsy survival and yearning quest for love 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 life anew in London. There, in blousy 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 1970s 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 her fragile soul asunder.