by Paul Murray
First published 2011
Skippy lies dying on the floor of a Dublin doughnut shop, and nobody knows why. The fourteen-year-old attended Seabrook College, where his best friend Ruprecht Van Doren spends his time trying to open portals into parallel universes using string theory. Carl, a drug dealer with violent tendencies, competes with Skippy for the same girl. The Automator, Seabrook's calculating headmaster, pushes his modernization agenda while hiding his own secrets. The investigation into Skippy's death exposes the connections between students, parents, and teachers at the prestigious school. Eoin Flynn raps as MC Sexecutioner, Philip Kilfether plays basketball despite his small stature, and everyone grapples with questions about Ritalin, physics, extreme sports, and Robert Frost's poetry. Murray captures the brutal realities of teenage life, where institutions protect themselves by abandoning vulnerable kids.
Genres: fiction, coming-of-age, contemporary, academic
Vibes: dark, emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Dublin, Seabrook College
Period: 21st-century
661 pages · Paperback · Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Content warnings: death, mental-illness