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 principal 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 the hip-hop-loving
Eoin "MC Sexecutioner" Flynn to the basketball-playing midget Philip
Kilfether, and 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.
