Skippy Dies: A Novel Paperback – August 30, 2011

If you're looking for a really good book to read, this is the one. Don't just add it to your TBR pile...go get a copy and read it. It's nearly 700 pages, but you won't even notice, especially if you buy it in the 3-box set. It is undoubtedly one of the funniest books I've ever read, but at the same time, quite poignant; it is a book that will at times tug at your heartstrings.The story begins in the first book, called "Hopeland," and continues through the next two books, "Heartland" and "Ghostland." In the very first scene at Ed's Doughnut House on a Friday evening in November, 14-year old Skippy, whose real name is Daniel Juster, is having a doughnut-eating race with his friend Ruprecht Van Doren, who boasts that he has not been beaten in "fifteen consecutive races." But something goes wrong and (this is not a spoiler) Skippy dies after leaving the words "Tell Lori" written in jam filling on the floor. And then the author takes his readers back to fall term at Seabrook College, the oldest Catholic boys' school in Ireland -- to find out exactly what brought things to this point.Skippy is a student who boards at Seabrook. Until just shortly before midterm, Skippy had been an excellent student, is on the school's swim team, and generally liked, but his grades have been falling recently. Skippy enjoys playing a video game called "Hopeland," a kind of mystic quest, which will increase in importance as the story goes on. He shares a room with Ruprecht, whose goal is to study at Stanford, and has a lab in the basement where he conducts experiments which he hopes will lead him to the secret origins of the universe. Skippy's other friends include Dennis, who is an "arch-cynic, whose very dreams are sadistic, hates the world and everything in it..." He also has Geoff, Niall and Mario as friends, although these characters (and many of the other boys around Skippy) are really less developed as characters than Ruprecht and Dennis. After thinking he sees a UFO one day, Skippy looks through Ruprecht's telescope and sees a girl throwing a Frisbee. This is Lori, a girl from St. Brigid's, a "smoking-hot" girl who immediately captures Skippy's attention. The problem is that another Seabrook boy, Barry, has become infatuated with Lori, and Barry is bad news.But this book is not just about the boys of Seabrook -- the school's faculty and staff are just as much a part of the story. One of the main characters is Howard Fallon, the school's history teacher, who himself graduated from Seabrook some ten years back, and is haunted by an episode from his past. There's Father Green, the French teacher, whose name the boys have translated into French as "Pere-vert". His calling, as he sees it, is to snuff out sin, but at the same time, he feels he must keep Skippy in a state of innocence. He has his own inner demons to deal with as well. Then there's Greg Costigan, the acting principal of Seabrook in the absence of Father Furlong, who has suffered a recent heart attack. Costigan is snarkily referred to as "the Automator," and believes that the Paraclete Order is on its last legs, and that the only solution is to modernize the school, with himself at the helm. He believes that Seabrook's history as the oldest Catholic boys' school is brandable -- and that the school's role is to prepare the students to "get up there on the world stage and duke it out with the best of them." He wants to roll with the times and represents progress in a very anti-traditionalist sort of way; he doesn't care that the boys actually learn anything, just that they pass their exams to continue Seabrook's reputation, come what may. The reputation of the school is everything and must remain so, no matter what. Fallon, on the other hand, begins to understand that history is something of value -- and that teaching others to care about the past may be just as important as throwing them into the competitive capitalist arena.Although Skippy Dies is often so funny you can't help but laugh out loud (for example, there's a scene where the boys' English teacher has just gone over the meaning of Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" and one of the kids takes his interpretation to a whole new level), the story is at times tragic and heartbreaking. It's a good look at how these teenagers understand and interpret themselves in the face of today's world (including sex and drug use) how they see adults, and how despair can cause loss of hope and yet for some, become a building experience. It's about the hold of memory on the human psyche and the importance of remembering. There are other themes at work as well -- including the socio-economic situation of modern Ireland and the role of the Catholic church in the face of all of the scandals that dog it -- making this very long book just fly by.I loved this book. Absolutely. It's extremely well written, although it does get bogged down a bit for a short time in the middle. But on the whole, it is most excellent. I have absolutely zero qualms about recommending it. It is so good you will not be able to stop reading it. I really hope it becomes a runaway bestseller.

Plenty of plot summaries already exist for this energetic tragicomedy set among the handful of boarders at a Dublin Catholic school - no need to write another recap of the huge cast of odd characters or the twisty road that takes them through the death of a classmate. Skippy Dies reads much shorter than its nearly 700 pages... Murray has a feel for pacing. More importantly, he has a strong sense of these early-teen boys - neither sympathetic nor damning, he captures their easy cruelty and flitting loyalties and ceaseless search for a sense of self. He reflects their casual drug abuse and hormone-fueled dramatic antics without commenting on them; they are, for the author and his characters, simply realities of adolescence. His judgment, then, is reserved for the adults who are unable or unwilling to shed that self-involvement. Without exception, these adults are deeply flawed - sometimes sympathetically so, but no less irredeemably. Paul Murray is a bit too on the nose when he digresses into World-War-I rantings about the betrayals of institutions and the unfairness of history, but the point remains: parents, teachers, governments and schools are plagued by their own self-involvement. In the end, this is a broadly cautionary tale: place no faith in assumed friendships or imposed leaders - both will betray you.For this heavy backdrop, however, Murray has a light touch. The teens' interactions are deft and charming, even when they are cruel. Skippy Dies is the finest kind of page-turner, one built of its own momentum and powered by compelling characters instead of artificial cliffhangers. Murray doesn't mock or satirize his characters, but he cloaks their darkness in daylight. He reminds us that of that moment where we each realized that teenage angst is universal, that we were both bullied and bullies, and that the insecurity we felt was the reflection of the insecurity we created in others. His Dublin can be lonely and can be funny, but mostly it is familiar.