Skippy Dies - Hardcover

Murray, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0865479437 ISBN 13: 9780865479432

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2010

Synopsis

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?

Could 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?

Could it involve Carl, the teenage drug dealer and borderline psychotic who is Skippy’s rival in love?

Or could “the Automator”—the ruthless, smooth-talking headmaster intent on modernizing the school—have something to hide?

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 basketballplaying 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. 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.

About this title

Review:

'Outrageously enjoyable, bittersweet . . . an Irish boarding school comedy to savour' --Guardian

'A blast of a book . . . big, generous, heartfelt, funny and sad' --Irish Times

'Hilarious, touching and tragic. Murray is the voice of a generation' --Grazia

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

'Gigantic, marvellous, witty, heartbreaking. The writing is second to none, the banter between the boys brilliant'
--Daily Telegraph

About the Author:

Paul Murray was born in 1975. He studied English literature at Trinity College in Dublin and creative writing at the University of East Anglia. His first novel, An Evening of Long Goodbyes,was short-listed for the Whitbread Prize in 2003 and was nominated for the Kerry Irish Fiction Award.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0865479437
• ISBN 13: 9780865479432
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 661