Pageview: Skippy Dies

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

This is not the easiest book to read. It meanders, it loiters and the way Murray renders certain characters' thought processes in text via grammar, font changes and disconnected run-ons is sometimes challenging. But it makes the book more real.

A classic stereotype of teenagers is "nobody understands me!". Murray gets right inside the heads of teenaged boarding school boys in the last decade and writes exactly what their brains are experiencing that manifests itself in that well-worn sentence. From the confused titular Skippy (really named Daniel Juster, Juster to his teachers and 'sport' to his trying-too-hard yet distant father) through the obtuse and precocious Ruprecht, simplistic and spoiled Lori and sociopathic Carl, he hasn't lost touch with the whirlwind of the world inside a 14-year-old's head. I found a few characters from my own past dressed up in Seabrook uniforms, not to mention many of the events. Quite scary echoes of my time at school made this story affect me more than I anticipated from the first few pages.

While the ending is unsatisfying and, despite the wandering plot, seems too unresolved even for the rest of the book, Skippy does die and the world surrounding him is shown before, during and after in a compelling and true way.

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