Skippy Dies by Paul Murray - Literary Fiction - Paperback Edition, Man Booker Longlisted

Condition: BRAND NEW. Format: Paperback. ISBN: 9780141009957. Publisher: Penguin. Age Range: Adult / 16+. Overview:. Skippy Dies is Paul Murray's acclaimed tragicomic novel set within the walls of Seabrook College, a Dublin boarding school. Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, this brand-new paperback follows a cast of misfit teenagers as they navigate first love, cruelty, ambition and grief. Blending laugh-out-loud comedy with genuine heartbreak, it is a modern classic of Irish literary fiction, perfect for readers who love character-driven, thought-provoking storytelling with real emotional weight and staying power.. About the Book:. The novel opens with the sudden death of fourteen-year-old Daniel "Skippy" Juster during a doughnut-eating contest, and then rewinds to unravel the tangled events that led there. At the centre of the story is Skippy's friendship with his roommate Ruprecht Van Doren, an overweight science prodigy obsessed with string theory, parallel universes and the possibility of contacting extraterrestrial life. Around them swirls a vivid ensemble of teachers, priests, drug dealers and girls from the neighbouring school, most notably Lori, the object of Skippy's tentative, doomed affection. Paul Murray moves fluidly between comic set pieces and darker undercurrents of bullying, addiction, institutional failure and adolescent despair, capturing the chaos of teenage life with both hilarity and tenderness. The Dublin boarding-school setting gives the novel a sharply observed social texture, satirising staff pretensions and pupil cruelty while never losing sympathy for its characters. The narrative widens to take in the adults around the boys, becoming a wider meditation on failure, longing and the gap between how we imagine our lives and how they actually turn out. It is riotously funny and deeply moving, and its ambition is part of why it was longlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize.. Key Benefits:. A genre-defying tragicomedy that balances dark humo