Skippy Dies

Skippy dies on the first page. Hell, he dies in the title, so I'm not spoiling anything.

The novel takes place in the fictional Seabrook College for Boys, a Catholic middle/high school. The school's denizens include Daniel "Skippy" Juster, his roommate Ruprecht Van Doren, and a large cast of drug abusers, fart lighters, dweebs, school bullies, victims, priests, and burned out teachers.

Skippy, the ostensible main character, is a hapless young man awash in a soup of depression, unknown trauma, and adolescent hormones. Skippy is a bit of a cipher, and is buffeted about mercilessly by forces larger than himself. But after his passing, he comes to mean different things to the other characters. Ruprecht is a would be scientist obsessed with M-Theory. He is searching, in his tinfoil hatted, shambolic way, for a way to break through the barriers into other dimensions. Carl is an unstable thug with a drug habit; he's a loaded gun waiting to go off. Howard is the school's history teacher, who has never quite grown up, and who desperately needs a catalyst to find his better self. Lori is a student at neighboring St. Brigid's, hovering between the dangerous Carl and the more wholesome Skippy. All of these characters are lost, and it is how their arcs connect that make this book what it is: a glorious exploration of youth, age, existential despair, and the way in which we tentatively carve out a meaning for our lives in an absurd universe.

I find Murray to be a more focused disciple of Thomas Pynchon in the way he brings together sophomoric hijinks, occasional stream-of-consciousness passages, and arcane detours into science, history, and mysticism. Unlike in Pynchon's books, Murray's story reveals itself to be surprisingly linear. Plot threads are ultimately resolved in ways that will satisfy old-school novel readers, even though Murray borrows techniques from Pynchon and Joyce.

The last pages are especially thrilling, as the various characters' stories come together. This is the best book I've read in 2012 so far (May 20). Highly recommended.

( )

There are many kinds of book laughter, from the small chuckle behind a permanent grin to the full body I-ate-the-wrong- brownies guffaw. Weak in the knees, waiting for breath again; I have often preferred laughter over love. A good laugh is true. This book astonished me. First, it captured boarding school life with pinpoint accuracy. I had extra fun seeing that life in its more recent incarnation with a zesty sprinkling of cellphones and the games that buzz and pop through modern life. Second, it had real pathos in it. Murray was unsparing in his depiction of love both teenage and adult, (we only think it's different) gone awry, hung to dry, and regretted. Since Skippy does die, this book also paints a searing portrait of grief in all the mayhem. And that is exactly where grief takes place, in life.
I don't know how he did all this. Murray begins with the death, continues with what leads up to it, and then finishes with the aftermath. Not one false move. So as I make my small effort to praise this book with more than , 'that was amazing,' I put it away with regret and thank it for insight as well. My son likes to have parties here at the house. They're all eighteen-plus now and old enough to drink; something best learned while not driving about. I establish how many are sleeping over, help set up, then hole up in my room. I make the adult walk-through every 55 minutes or anytime I sense a disturbance in the Force.
Last Friday a young man had overdone it a bit and his friend was helping him out in the guest room. I got them some ginger ale and crackers and told the young man who was in rough shape not to text his old girlfriend. "How did you know that? How did you know they just broke up?" they asked, eyes big as saucers. "Oh...I just made a good guess," I said. "Let me show you how to open that window. A little cold air is always nice. Maybe you want to keep his phone for a bit."

...because I know. ( )

I think I didn't particularly like this book, but it's not the book's fault. Everything I read lately is cast with the dreariest case of woe-is-me I've had in a while, enough that it's difficult to find enjoyment in any book. It sucks. The stupid mood, not the book. I had rated it low but I think it was more because I was comparing childhoods with someone in the middle of it, someone who had a background much more similar to this book and once again highlighting what a sheltered freak I am and how life seems to be passing by too quickly to taste it. I'm not sure why missing out on much of the horror and alienation of the teen years feels like a loss; maybe because there's a huge slice of experience I'll never have.

It's a rough ride, this story. It's set in an Irish boys' school at some point in the past 20 years or so, a time when religion is starting to lose its grip on the country and its children. Skippy, one of the students, dies at the very start. Then the story goes back a few months to trace what happened in the lives of these boys and one of the teachers. Man, what a bunch of screwups. And so stuck in their heads. It was almost painful to read with all these events charged with the adolescent urgency that makes end-of-the-world drama out of the slightest slight or the glimpse of a pretty girl, and on top of it all some actual and serious sh*t threading through along with medications & drugs in an attempt to smooth it all out.

I keep thinking back to this book. I'm accustomed to reading things where stuff works out in the end things that reflect the Pollyanna sort of outlook I've had that doesn't seem to be aging well. Things really don't work out all the time, do they? It's taken a long time for that to sink into the dense morass I like to call my mind. I guess I found this book depressing for once again representing how wrong I've been. I guess it's quite effective, in that it effected a queasy shift in my mental guts.

Not that it lacks in areas other than the heavy realities. The humor of adolescent boys, hah, often centered around their imaginary prowess with the ladies, very funny here, and the Halloween costumes got an audible laugh out of me. The loyalty of friendships and the joy of learning, also well done.

I've never been a good writer, but I'm worse than ever now. How to wrap up? I guess...despite feeling negatively about it, I think it's worth reading. My 2 cents. ( )

Though, as others have said, this book does meander a bit in the middle, it's ultimately fantastic. The world of Seabrook is deeply, sometimes evilly, flawed and yet still somehow wonderful, and you'll miss it when you turn the final page. The device of killing off poor Skippy in the opening pages and then going back and giving him a back story serves to give genuine pathos to what begins as a somewhat silly tragedy. (The use of the second person, formerly reserved for the Skippy chapters, for a smattering of other characters after Skippy's death is a subtle stroke of genius. His deaths sends waves of impact over everyone, his influence literally traceable.) And in the end Paul Murray manages to conjure up the most important thing, to me, that a novel can offer: a world where truly anything has become possible. ( )

I toiled through half before the library ransomed it back and didn't like it well enough to buy so I could finish. I prefer my adolescent boys more along the lines of Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha or Black Swan Green--you know, the tragic, yearning type. Not so much a fan of the cartoonish & crude lads of this book.