51 pages • 1 hour read
Patrick MccabeBreakfast on Pluto
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 42-56Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 42 Summary: “Vengeance Shall Be Mine, Says Puss!”
While he climbs the walls of his cell, Pussy imagines himself and his mother on a deserted island, where they enjoy the sun and sip cocktails. Braden’s mother tells him to forgive Father Bernard, but he realizes he cannot. As the doctor at the police station warns that Braden should be medicated, the young man swears vengeance upon his father and the whole community of Tyreelin.
Chapter 43 Summary: “The Lurex Avenger”
Braden imagines appearing in Tyreelin as the Lurex Avenger, “Stench-Banisher, Perfume-Bringer, Flower-Scatterer, Ender of the Darkness” (145).
Chapter 44 Summary: “The Stench That No One Knows Is There”
The Nolan family sits down for lunch as a strange scent pervades their room. It is Chanel No. 19, which the Avenger likes to wear. She has come to remove the age-old stench of the little town, which has been present so long the residents have become accustomed to it and do not recognize its toxicity.
Chapter 45 Summary: “A Great Day for Bonzo”
Braden’s old classmate, Irish Catholic Pat McGrane, works at a meat factory, and one Friday afternoon, he finishes the day with extra money for working overtime. He travels to Northern Ireland to see his Protestant girlfriend, Sandra, whom he loves, even though they have different tastes in music. (She likes Gene Stuart, and Pat is a Credence Clearwater Revival fan.) They spend a lovely night together planning their wedding, and on his way back home, the Protestant rebels capture Pat and torture him to death by chipping and slicing bits of his flesh.
“Perfume: 1,000,000 v. Stench: 0” Summary
Police officer Wallis wonders at Braden’s wild thrashing in his cell, even smiling a little at him during interrogation.
Terence asks Braden to write about his life so he can understand it, but then he leaves the hospital and Braden.
Chapter 46 Summary: “A View from the Hill”
It is the night of Irwin’s death. Two men, Jackie Timlin and the Horse Kinane, both IRA members, drink at Mulvey’s bar as they prepare to kill one of their own for informing the police of their activities. They gave Irwin numerous warnings, which he did not obey, and so they must kill him, despite having known him and his family all their lives. They feel sick as they tape Irwin’s confession, cover his head with a black bag, and shoot him, knowing they will have to put his body into the trunk of the car and dump it at the local quarry.
“Die, Daddy!” Summary
Puss conflates Irwin’s death with his desire to take revenge on Father Bernard and everyone else “who brought the poison to the valley” (159).
Chapter 47 Summary: “Vicky Likes Salmon!!”
Pussy visits the house where the Protestant rebels have just murdered another man and entices the leader of the crew, Big Vicky, to show him his big gun in private. Big Vicky allows Pussy to handle his Magnum, and Pussy shoots him in the head and the genitals.
“Terence Was Right” Summary
Braden hates this last piece of writing because it contains everything he should not feel. However, he keeps these writings out of love and respect for Terence.
Chapter 48 Summary: “A Church in Flames”
Father Bernard prepares to go to church to hear confessions. There he greets two of his most devout parishioners and spies an anonymous woman wearing a headscarf and drab coat. It is Pussy, who plans to surprise him by dressing as a woman (remembering the torture of questions like “What are you?” that have plagued him most of his life). He scratches his face and sets fire to the church, screaming, “Never will I forgive you!” (166).
Chapter 49 Summary: “A Sudden Burst of Gunfire”
On a quiet night at Mulvey’s bar, gunfire suddenly erupts, hitting the walls and shattering glass. It is Puss, taking his revenge on Tyreelin.
“Free!” Summary
Inspector Routledge abruptly awakens Braden from his fantasies and tells him he is free to go.
Chapter 50 Summary: “Lynsey de Paul”
In prison, Braden felt protected and able to indulge in his revenge fantasies, so at first, he refuses to leave. Still clinging to his vengeful hallucinations, he returns to prostitution to earn the money to travel back to Tyreelin.
He boards a plane home dressed as a woman. For the first time, Braden flirts with a man in public as a woman, and the man compares Braden to a popular chanteuse (a nightclub singer).
Chapter 51 Summary: “I Become a Bit of a Busybody!”
Once back in Tyreelin, Braden reunites with Charlie, who has taken Irwin’s death very hard. She left college and started drinking and doing drugs, so her family kicked her out.
Braden rents a bungalow for the two of them with the money he earned in London and gets Charlie a dog, which somebody soon kills by strangling it with barbed wire.
Braden develops the compulsive habit of cleaning the house all day and starts worrying about the number of unwanted babies and young mothers in Tyreelin (which is why he compels Martina Sheridan to abandon the affair with a married man). He cries a lot at the thought of all the babies who will share his fate.
Chapter 52 Summary: “‘I’m In Love!’”
Braden falls in love with a man from town. Although he has seen the man many times before, that night at Mulvey’s, Braden feels seen and begins to spin a fairytale about their life together, losing all rational control. (Terence tells Braden she should have left the town then.)
Chapter 53 Summary: “If I Wasn’t There”
Braden spends the next three days in a constant state of intoxication, going to Mulvey’s every night in hopes of a fling with Brendan Cleeve. The man, however, ignores him completely.
Braden accepts Terence’s judgment that he was probably a little crazy at the time, especially because on the third night at the bar, he breaks into sobs.
Chapter 54 Summary: “The Other Thing”
While feeling dejected and rejected that third night at Mulvey’s, Braden commits an “unforgivable” act. He sees Tina Kelleher sidle up to Brendan and kiss him, so Braden walks up to them and sets Tina’s hair on fire. The look Brendan gives Braden seems to say, “I shall never forget as long as there’s breath in my body” (183).
Chapter 55 Summary: “We Leave Tyreelin For Ever”
Soon after the event at Mulvey’s, someone steals all Braden’s dresses from the washing line and destroys them. Braden does not mind, but when Squire the dog is killed, he breaks down. After this event, Braden understands he and Charlie must leave the town forever. He hides the dog’s death from Charlie, telling her it ran away. They visit Irwin’s grave and leave the town in 1975.
Chapter 56 Summary: “He’s Ours!”
A long time after the events of 1975, things have not changed much for Pussy. She is still alone, but because she has accepted that men will leave without warning—especially following the departure of Dr. Terence—she feels less lonely. She wanted to burn all her writings but resisted the temptation. She is now an outpatient and lives in an apartment in a building full of laborers who mostly leave her alone. Her neighbors even invite her to a party, though she refuses the invitation because she is aware they think she is crazy.
Pussy never found her mother, although she tried. At one point, she stopped doing escort work and donated all her dresses to charity, keeping only her housecoat and headscarf. Charlie’s life is back to normal: She married and has three children.
Pussy still dreams of having a baby. In her vision, she is surrounded by her family as they beam with pride at the baby and say, “He’s ours” (188).
Chapters 42-56 Analysis
Braden’s time in jail, as mentioned above, is a crucial moment at which Braden’s grip on reality, already unstable, breaks. McCabe utilizes this sequence to further blur the line between fantasy and reality, which yet again destabilizes readers and thus creates a sense of uneasiness and confusion. This is a significant element of the novel’s structure because it allows the author to explore the mind of the protagonist in a way that places readers within Braden’s disturbing streams of thought without compromising their accessibility. Even though Braden performs all narration in a book within a book, McCabe’s technique here both distances us from Braden’s experience by encouraging confusion and involves us in his complex revenge fantasies through direct insight into Braden’s inventions.
In a series of chapters, Braden rejects the reality of the prison cell, instead vesting his mind in escapism through often vengeful delusions. Even in his fantasy of spending time with his mother on a heavenly island, there is still the persistent presumption that he should find forgiveness for Father Bernard, which, even in fantasy, Braden rejects. Not only does Braden dismiss forgiveness, but he also actively works against it, instead envisioning a complex fantasy in which he descends upon his hometown as the Lurex Avenger (again, in fantasies, Braden is fully female). Braden aims his revenge at figures and places he believes are responsible for the misery of his own life, as well as for the general tragedy of the Irish provincial life, like the church, a stereotypical Irish small-town family, the small-minded people in Mulvey’s bar, and the Irish terrorists.
The out-of-body experience in prison allows Braden to finally embody his female persona fully. As demonstrated by the female embodiment of the Lurex Avenger, it is in femininity that Braden finds autonomy and power. Following his imagined vindication through fantasy, Braden feel compelled to seek that same level of autonomy and power in reality, and for the first time he travels to Tyreelin in an entirely female form. This signifies a deeper change in Braden’s personality: He is finally coming to terms with his identity and slowly learning to release his past. In time, this evolution will lead him to become Mrs. Riley, the persona that frames Braden’s story. While Braden’s full mental breakdown in jail, from anyone else’s perspective, might seem like a tragedy, with Braden as the narrator, we can understand that this break was necessary for him to claim his true identity. Mrs. Riley rises from the ashes of Braden’s final collapse.
Another vital and terminal break comes with Braden’s return to Tyreelin. The events that take place during the visit finally shatter the hold that the small town and its mentality hold over Braden (and his friend Charlie) and allow them to start life anew. Again, we see a metaphorical rising from the ashes, this time with the symbolic and literal visualization of fire. Braden uses fire to burn his enemy, Tina Kelleher, which sets off a string of events that also breaks the remaining connection he feels to the town. The act of setting Tina Kelleher’s hair on fire is a symbolic manifest enactment of his revenge fantasies, and McCabe positions this event, along with Braden’s full adoption of female personality, as key in the town’s decision to exact a brutal revenge and Braden’s ultimate departure. This sequence of events is necessary to the logic of the novel: Without them, Braden might never have reached this crossroads at which he leaves Tyreelin forever and fully embodies his female identity. Paradoxically, the town’s small-minded bigotry finally frees Braden to become Mrs. Riley, despite this being the last result the community would wish to engender.
When we consider the broader context of the novel, Braden’s revenge fantasy in which he seeks justice for the death of his friend Irwin is of particular importance. When Braden envisions the events surrounding the death of Irwin, he depicts for the reader the ruthlessness and personal proximity of the conflict, as Irwin’s murderers were longtime friends of his family. While this scene may be lost in the chaos of Braden’s mental breakdown, it is an illuminating vision of reality. So when Braden seeks revenge against the IRA’s leader, this is not only a personal act of vengeance, but a communal one. Irwin’s death also crushes Charlie, pushing Braden to abandon his own narcissism and take up a new sense of empathy in order to help his friend navigate her grief.
Braden’s arrival in prison to his final adieu to Tyreelin is a time of profound psychological change. Although this evolution threatens to break Braden’s sanity, it ultimately allows him to assume his full identity and find a way of life that is, if not happy, at least removed from the hatred and rage that formerly plagued him. McCabe describes Mrs. Riley’s life as one of resignation, quiet suffering, loneliness, and occasional pain, but Mrs. Riley has carved a sense of peace and calm out of his early years of rage and the novel closes with a sense of personal dignity.
