**The bestselling and critically acclaimed novel from Paul Murray,
Skippy Dies, shortlisted for the 2010 Costa Book Awards, longlisted
for the 2010 Booker Prize, and a finalist for the National Book Critics
Circle Award.
**
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 basketball playing
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.
