Skippy Dies is Irish author Paul Murray’s second novel, published in 2010, and long listed for the 2010 Booker Prize.
The story starts with the death of Daniel Juster – or Skippy to his friends – in a doughnut shop. We then go back to events leading up to Skippy’s demise, before moving on to a dramatic aftermath.
In some ways this is an old fashioned book, set in a posh boarding school, describing the humorous antics of pupils and teachers – reminding me of Kipling’s Stalky and Co., and Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, both of which I’ve read recently. On the other hand, Skippy Dies is very modern. The boarding part of the school is old and decrepit, earmarked for rebuilding. The involvement of the Catholic Church in running the school is winding down, an unpleasant, management-speak acting-principal manoeuvring to take over from an ailing incumbent. The pupils have modern concerns, whether that means video games, fast food, drugs, or in the case of one scientifically-inclined boy called Ruprecht, string theory. The story also has a harsh edge of realism, which makes Stalky and Co. at its most unpleasant, seem traditionally well-mannered by comparison.
Thinking about what I made of it, I kept recalling one particular scene where a group of boys discuss Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Less Travelled. Dennis, the class cynic, thinks it’s about less than orthodox sexual practices, which seems a crazy idea, but which actually makes perfect sense of the poem. I thought of Skippy Dies in this way – a book presenting life as a confusing mess, where any interpretation of its ‘meaning’ is going to make you sound like a schoolboy with mad ideas about the poems of Robert Frost. And yet… the mad meaning actually seems to make sense of what you’re reading. String theory boy, Ruprecht, is continually trying to come up with a scientific concept that explains the universe. If there is any theory explaining the Skippy Dies universe, it is a contradictory scheme that is complete nonsense but still, in an odd way, hangs together. Maybe if scientists do ever come up with a theory that explains the universe, it might be nice if it’s something similar, an explanation that leaves much to explain.
This is a big, sprawling, funny, tough book with lots of scientific and historical ideas colliding with doughnut eating and cynicism. It’s certainly fun to read, though some sections are distinctly discomforting. Overall, a traditional-feeling book with a modern message.