Skippy Dies

by Paul Murray

'Skippy and Ruprecht are having a doughnut-eating race one evening when Skippy turns purple and falls off his chair . . .'
And so begins Skippy Dies - an epic, tragic, comic, brilliant novel set in and around Dublin's Seabrook College for Boys. Principally concerning the lives, loves, mistakes and triumphs of overweight maths-whiz Ruprecht Van Doren and his roommate Daniel 'Skippy' Juster, it features a frisbee-throwing siren called Lori, the joys (and horrors) of first love, the use and blatant misuse of prescription drugs, Carl (the official school psychopath), various attempts to unravel string theory . . . while at the same time exploring the very deepest mysteries of the human heart.


(From Publisher).

Paul Murray was born in 1975. He studied English literature at Trinity College in Dublin. He has a Masters degree in creative writing at the University of East Anglia. Paul was a former bookseller and his first novel, An Evening of Long Goodbyes, was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize in 2003 and was nominated for the Kerry Irish Fiction Award.

A warm and moving book, this is a thumping good read, both funny and poignant with characters drawn with great affection.

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.

It is easy to see why this book appeared on so many top 10 lists of 2010. Set in Seabrook College for Boys in Dublin, this enjoyable, funny and moving read establishes Paul Murray as a writer from whom greater things can be expected.

Skippy Dies combines teen angst, faculty politics, and Irish history in a multi-layered examination of contemporary Irish school life, in prose ranging from gritty to lyrical.

A tour de force that manages to be both dauntingly erudite and mind-bending in its range, yet with tremendous pathos and humor throughout.