Skippy Dies
Paul Murray
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2010
'A triumph. Brimful of wit and narrative energy' Sunday Times
'Novels rarely come as funny and as moving as this. One of the finest comic novels written anywhere' Irish Times
Ruprecht Van Doren is an overweight genius whose hobbies include very difficult maths and the Search of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Daniel 'Skippy' Juster is his roommate. In the grand old Dublin institution that is Seabrook College for Boys, nobody pays either of them much attention. But when Skippy falls for Lori, the frisbee-playing siren from the girls' school next door, suddenly all kinds of people take an interest - including Carl, part-time drug-dealer and official school psychopath. . .
A tragic comedy of epic sweep and dimension, 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.
'An unforgettably exuberant saga set in an Irish boys' school. The insulting repartee is Shakespearean, the minor characters hilarious, and Murray captures the fleeting joys and lasting sorrows of adolescence perfectly' Daily Telegraph
'The sprawling brilliance of Paul Murray's darkly comic second novel works on many different levels... When you finish the last page, you may be tempted to start all over again' Metro
Product Details
About Paul Murray
Reviews for Skippy Dies
Sunday Times
One of the most enjoyable, funny and moving reads of this year. A rare tragicomedy that's both genuinely tragic and genuinely comic
Guardian
Darkly comic, dazzles, every line drips ideas for fun. Unputdownably funny, captivating. A masterpiece
Metro
Ambitious, wise, funny, fiercely intelligent. The beauty of this cynical, hopeful, beautifully written book is that it builds a detailed world to explore life, the universe and everything
Sunday Express
Hilarious, heartbreaking, totally engrossing. A triumph
Daily Mail
Noisy, hilarious, tragic, endlessly inventive, plain brilliant. A carnival of a novel
The Times
Novels rarely come as funny and as moving as this utterly brilliant exploration of teenhood and the anticlimax of becoming an adult . . . Skippy Dies is intuitive, truthful and one of the finest comic novels written anywhere. Dies? Never! Skippy lives
Irish Times
I loved Skippy Dies . . . three novels fused into one ignited tragicomic tour de force
Times Literary Supplement
Skippy Dies is one great high-octane fizz bang of a book
Irish Times
Extravagantly entertaining
New York Times Book Review