Skippy Dies

From the author of The Bee Sting

Paul Murray

- 4.1 • 36 Ratings

- £5.99

- £5.99

Paul Murray's Skippy Dies is a tragicomic masterpiece about a Dublin boarding school

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2010

Ruprecht Van Doren is an overweight genius whose hobbies include very difficult maths and the Search of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Daniel 'Skippy' Juster is his roommate. In the grand old Dublin institution that is Seabrook College for Boys, nobody pays either of them much attention. But when Skippy falls for Lori, the frisbee-playing siren from the girls' school next door, suddenly all kinds of people take an interest - including Carl, part-time drug-dealer and official school psychopath. . .

A tragic comedy of epic sweep and dimension, Skippy Dies scours the corners of the human heart and wrings every drop of pathos, humour and hopelessness out of life, love, Robert Graves, mermaids, M-theory, and everything in between.

'That rare thing, a comic epic. . . Murray is a brilliant comic writer, but also humane and touching, and he captures the misery and elation, joy and anxiety of teenage life' David Nicholls, Guardian

'Novels rarely come as funny and as moving as this utterly brilliant exploration of teenhood and the anticlimax of becoming an adult . . . one of the finest comic novels written anywhere' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times

'I loved Skippy Dies . . . three novels fused into one ignited tragicomic tour de force' Ali Smith, Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year

'An unforgettably exuberant saga set in an Irish boys' school. The insulting repartee is Shakespearean, the minor characters hilarious, and Murray captures the fleeting joys and lasting sorrows of adolescence perfectly' Emma Donoghue, Daily Telegraph

'A triumph . . . brimful of wit and narrative energy' Sunday Times

'The sprawling brilliance of Paul Murray's darkly comic second novel works on many different levels . . . When you finish the last page, you may be tempted to start all over again' Metro

Paul Murray is the author of An Evening of Long Goodbyes, shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award in 2005, and Skippy Dies, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2010.

APPLE BOOKS REVIEW

It only takes a few pages for boarding-school student Daniel ‘Skippy’ Juster to die on the floor of a doughnut shop in Paul Murray's darkly funny Skippy Dies. We’re left to sift through the events leading to the diminutive 14-year-old's death, watching as he deals with teenage issues like schoolwork, sex, family and drugs and falls in with a group of boys that will appeal to fans of Freaks and Geeks. Murray’s sprawling tale also involves strange priests, depressed teachers, violent bullies and the search for parallel universes, taking tragicomic turns that will resonate with anyone who’s lived through puberty.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 12 JUL 2010

While there is an undeniable similarity between this long novel and another popular series featuring an adolescent protagonist who, along with his friends, gets into all kinds of mischief at a haunted boarding school, the two works couldn't be more different; this is a decidedly adult novel. The primary plot charts the brief life of 14-year-old Daniel "Skippy" Juster, a student at Seabrook Academy, an elite junior high school in Dublin. Skippy is smitten with Lori, who attends the neighboring girls' school, but has a problem: Lori's sort of boyfriend, Carl, is a sociopathic drug dealer. Another major narrative follows Skippy's history teacher, Howard "The Coward," a man equally infatuated with WWI and Miss McIntyre, a fellow teacher. With dark humor, Murray examines adolescent sexuality in an age of texting, video games, and the casual use of pharmaceuticals. Murray nails the banter of junior high, the nuance of middle-age yearning, and the excitement of string theory, and shows mastery in weaving disparate elements into a cohesive and engaging narrative. This is one of the darkest and funniest novels in recent memory.

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