Skippy Dies

 People will believe anything, if it's what they want to hear.

--Paul Murray, The Mark and the Void

I intended to write something earlier than now about a novel I had just recently finished reading, but then all of this election bullshit found its way into my head and interrupted me for a moment. 

Although the quote above is from Paul Murray's novel The Mark and the Void, what I wanted to talk about was Skippy Dies.

I approached Skippy Dies in much the same way I had approached Murray's novel The Bee Sting, which is to say with a certain unreasonable prejudice. Well, what prejudice is reasonable? one might ask. In short, I did not like the title (which however--spoiler alert--turned out to be perfect). Nor did I feel interested in the brief description of the story found on the internet--the various goings-on at an Irish Catholic school for boys. It just didn't seem to be something that would touch me. 

Nonetheless, having come away from The Bee Sting astounded at this writers narrative and stylistic excellence, I decided to give Skippy Dies a shot. And boy am I glad I did. 

Like The Bee Sting, Skippy Dies is quite long, some 600 plus pages. But it is the kind of long that you don't want to end. You find yourself living there, in that school, and among those boys. More than that, you find yourself living back in your own adolescence, among all the very similar boys you knew, as well as the you that you knew. How Murray has managed to retain such an intimate acquaintance with what it is to be that age, I do not know. He has remembered here all of the things that most of us forget, and perhaps intentionally so. He remembers the careless disregard on the surface, the facade, and the naive, unreasoning, invulnerable hopes that lie beneath, striving toward the moment they are finally broken by that compromised, corrupted world of despair we call adulthood.

Skippy Dies is both laugh out loud funny and painfully bitter--which might be described as Murray's signature style. Forewarned is forearmed. This book will both fill your heart and break it.