Skippy Dies
SynopsisPlot
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. 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.
Story
About this book
Seabrook College is a long-established boys' school in Dublin, and Daniel Juster, known as Skippy, is one of its least remarkable students. His roommate Ruprecht Van Doren is an overweight prodigy consumed by advanced mathematics and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Neither attracts much notice until Skippy becomes infatuated with Lori, a girl from the school next door, drawing the attention of Carl, a classmate who deals drugs and radiates menace. What follows is a collision of teenage longing, rivalry, and a doughnut-eating contest with fatal consequences.
Paul Murray populates the novel with a wide, eccentric cast. Among the students are Eoin Flynn, a fourteen-year-old hip-hop enthusiast who calls himself MC Sexecutioner, and Philip Kilfether, a diminutive basketball player. Meanwhile, the school's faculty fight their own battles over whether to modernize the institution or preserve its traditions. The story threads together subjects as varied as Ritalin, string theory, bungee jumping, and the poetry of Robert Frost.
Set against the routines and hierarchies of an Irish boarding school, the novel examines how adults and teenagers inhabit overlapping worlds while understanding almost nothing about each other. Secrets accumulate on both sides of the staff-room door, and the distance between past and present narrows in ways none of the characters expect.
