Skippy Dies Uneven but Intriguing Read

SKIPPY DIES (2010)
By Paul Murray
Faber and Faber, ISBN 978-0-86547-943-2, 661 pp.

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Paul Murray’s sophomore novel opens with a shock: fourteen-year-old Daniel “Skippy” Juster has just died on the floor of a down-market Dublin doughnut shop, the name of his girlfriend upon his lips. Why did Skippy die? Was if for love? Was it the pills he and his friends indiscriminately pop? Was if from a ruptured heart triggered by his recent swim meet? Or is something more sinister to blame?

Murray’s sprawling novel is, at turns, sad, provocative, chilling, and screamingly funny. It is set at Seabrook College, a once-tony-grown-shabby Irish Catholic prep school. It’s a place that’s been cruising on its reputation for decades, the kind of place where “tradition” is constantly invoked in the hope that no one will notice that “venerable” has been steamrollered by “sclerotic.” The priests who nominally run the place are old and tired, as is much of the lay faculty. In fact, the entire staff knows the place is a joke except for “the Automator,” oily Acting Principal Greg Costigan, who is determined to modernize Seabrook and aggrandize himself in the process. The students are certainly aware that Seabrook is just a place where their well-heeled parents stuck them to get them out of sight and out of mind, a reality Murray reveals in several tortured phone calls between Skippy and his clueless father.

Skippy Dies isn’t really about why Daniel Juster died; it’s really about how institutions, families, and individuals fall apart in ways analogous to the famed frog-in-the-pot scenario in which the frog isn’t aware he’s being slowly boiled to death. In many ways, it’s also a metaphor for Ireland. (Remember how the Celtic Tiger turned out to be declawed stray cat?) The kids are especially sharply drawn. Murray assembles a memorable cast. Skippy’s family life is so screwed up that he finds temporary solace in Lori, a little flirt who’s taking him for a twisted ride. His roommate is Ruprecht Van Doren, an obese, doughnut-inhaling nerd who is either a future genius or a young Frankenstein, who is busy building a machine constructed of copious amounts of tinfoil, which he hopes will allow him to access the eleventh dimension! Others in his circle include Mario, who carries his “lucky” condom, which has never been out of its wrapper in the three years he’s possessed it; the über-cynic Dennis; and Titch, a vacuous preppy predestined to follow his old man into the gray-flannel realm of banking and mergers. Murray absolutely nails teenaged angst. He paints a world of boys obsessed by sex and thoughtless in their personal interactions, though vaguely aware of being adrift. Skippy’s group lives in mortal fear of thuggish upper classmen, especially a clique led by Carl, a neo-fascist drug pusher who does his best to hide the demons that would reveal him to be frightened, damaged, and insecure.

Where are the adults to help the kids navigate these shoals? Clueless would be too charitable an adjective. History teacher Howard Fallon is a milquetoast dubbed “Howard the Coward” by students and peers alike, and not without reason. Costigan is what Carl will look like in ten years and Miss McIntyre the amoral temptress Lori will become. The rest are assorted cynics and fools, except for the priests, who are something altogether darker. The adults don’t hear each other, let alone the kids; in fact, they are often revealed responding to imagined conversations, not what was actually said.

Murray uses humor, surrealism, absurdism, and splashes of magical realism throughout. These add needed balance to the pathos and tragedy of a story that’s less coming-of-age than end-of-an-age. At 661 pages the novel sprawls, sometimes effectively, but often not. At 400 taut pages Skippy Dies would have been a small masterpiece; as is, it sometimes stumbles over its myriad style and mood shifts, and the hit-us-over-the-head metaphors. (The theme of futility is, for instance, hammered and anviled home by Howard’s obsession with World War I.) Overall, though, it’s a worthwhile read. I’ll give you a hint: Skippy didn’t choke on doughnuts.