Patrick McCabe





Patrick McCabe

Author profile


born
in Clones, County Monaghan, Ireland
March 27, 1955

gender
male

genre

influences


About this author

Patrick McCabe came to prominence with the publication of his third adult novel, The Butcher Boy, in 1992; the book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in Britain and won the Irish Times-Aer Lingus Prize for fiction. McCabe's strength as an author lies in his ability to probe behind the veneer of respectability and conformity to reveal the brutality and the cloying and corrupting stagnation of Irish small-town life, but he is able to find compassion for the subjects of his fiction. His prose has a vitality and an anti-authoritarian bent, using everyday language to deconstruct the ideologies at work in Ireland between the early 1960s and the late 1970s. His books can be read as a plea for a pluralistic Irish culture that can encompass the p...more


Average rating: 3.59 · 5,149 ratings · 488 reviews · 20 distinct works · Similar authors
The Butcher Boy
3.8 of 5 stars 3.80 avg rating — 2,841 ratings — published 1992 — 20 editions
Breakfast on Pluto
3.42 of 5 stars 3.42 avg rating — 896 ratings — published 1999 — 13 editions
The Dead School
3.65 of 5 stars 3.65 avg rating — 389 ratings — published 1995 — 6 editions
Winterwood
3.09 of 5 stars 3.09 avg rating — 411 ratings — published 2009 — 13 editions
Mondo Desperado
3.05 of 5 stars 3.05 avg rating — 123 ratings8 editions
Carn
3.35 of 5 stars 3.35 avg rating — 100 ratings4 editions
Emerald Germs of Ireland
2.93 of 5 stars 2.93 avg rating — 119 ratings — published 2001 — 8 editions
Call Me the Breeze
3.15 of 5 stars 3.15 avg rating — 88 ratings — published 1990 — 8 editions
The Stray Sod Country
3.38 of 5 stars 3.38 avg rating — 53 ratings — published 2010 — 5 editions
The Holy City
3.19 of 5 stars 3.19 avg rating — 52 ratings — published 2008 — 11 editions
More books by Patrick McCabe…

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“You'll have to learn to forgive," he said. "For if you don't, you know what will happen?"
"What, Doctor?" I croaked, for my outburst had exhausted me.
"It will destroy you," he said as he handed me the tea.
A tear came into my eye when he said it for I knew it was true and I would have loved to be able to do it (not because of its destroying me but because it was right, and deep down I knew that) but I couldn't and the more I thought of it the more the blood came coursing to my head so that whenever I'd write I'd find myself clutching the pencil so tight I broke the lead how many times I don't know, hundreds.”
Patrick McCabe, Breakfast on Pluto

“Oh now now he says that's all over you must forget all about that next week your solitary finishes how about that hmm? I felt like laughing in his face: How can your solitary finish? That's the best laugh yet.”
Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy

“Although I'm afraid I don't get too many clients these days!”
Patrick McCabe, Breakfast on Pluto

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