Murray navigates freely through multiple points of view, conveying the omnivorous flexibility of the boys' mental landscape and the way they exist as a sort of collective consciousness. This isn't Harry Potter, however - these kids are dealing with porn and drugs and lots of other heavy-duty reality. With a masterful sleight of hand, Paul Murray has turned adolescence into a magical realist wonderland. As the twenty-first century enters its teenage years, this is a breathtaking novel from a young writer who will come to define his generation. With a cast of characters that ranges from hip-hop-loving fourteen-year-old Eoin 'MC Sexecutioner Flynn to basketball-playing midget Philip Kilfether, packed with questions and answers on everything from Ritalin, to M-theory, to bungee jumping, to the hidden meaning of the poetry of Robert Frost, Skippy Dies is a heartfelt, hilarious portrait of the pain, joy, and occasional beauty of adolescence, and a tragic depiction of a world always happy to sacrifice its weakest members. Why Skippy dies and what happens next is the subject of this dazzling and uproarious novel, unraveling a mystery that links the boys of Seabrook College to their parents and teachers in ways nobody could have imagined. Or could 'the Automator', the ruthless, smooth-talking headmaster intent on modernizing the school, have something to hide?

Why does Skippy, a fourteen-year-old boy at Dublin's venerable Seabrook College, end up dead on the floor of the local doughnut shop?Ĭould it have something to do with his friend Ruprecht Van Doren, an overweight genius who is determined to open a portal into a parallel universe using ten-dimensional string theory?Ĭould it involve Carl, the teenage drug dealer and borderline psychotic who is Skippys rival in love?

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray