Book Review: "Skippy Dies" by Paul Murray

At the moment I'm working on some stuff for 2026 and yet, I'm not too hopeful for the new year. I don't know, there doesn't seem to be the same buzz of excitement that met this year - absolutely nobody is saying '2026 will be my year' because we've all learned over the last couple of years that its been pretty terrible and we shouldn't get our hopes up. You probably know that the last year or two have been the worst (by far the worst) years of my life and yet, I'm still going and I've just finished this book which is packed full of all different emotions... here's a review of Skippy Dies by Paul Murray...

‘Life makes fools of us all sooner or later. But keep your sense of humour and you’ll at least be able to take your humiliations with some measure of grace. In the end, you know, it’s our own expectations that crush us.’

- Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

A sardonic laugh on the education system, this book starts with an eating competition in which Skippy, a 14-year-old boy at Seabrook College, chokes and dies. Needless to say, it takes him a while to choke but when he dies, the book goes from dialogue to silence. But still, it is written in a way that makes the characters seem ignorant and detached from reality a bit - a running theme in the rest of the book. Immediately, this is much better and much more readable than Murray's later novel The Bee Sting, which definitely wasn't for me. Skippy Dies seems like it was written in a similar sardonic style to the novels of Jonathan Coe - the writer of The Rotters' Club. It is a brilliant opening that establishes the major themes and ideas of the rest of the book. One of them being dissatisfaction and moral failure.

The novel doesn't move chronologically but instead, I can say it moves diagonally. There's a look back into the months leading up to Skippy's death and then there's different storylines upon the same time period and yet then, there is an aftermath in which we see the reactions to Skippy's death. I think it is safe to say that Skippy's death is not the beginning or the end of the timeline but instead it is the dead centre. It is a centrepoint in which the characters must admit they require to confront certain things about themselves. Why? Well, because Skippy is a lonely boy - he is gentle and kind, a representative of the invisible type of adolescent boy who often has to deal with bullying. The reader has an emotional attachment to him.

His closest friend, Ruprecht Van Doren, is an overweight, intellectually gifted boy obsessed with theoretical physics and the mysteries of the universe. He become obsessed with the idea that his friend's death might be reversible with the help of quantum physics - which I think is quite sweet given the circumstances of Skippy's death. Parallel to the boys’ story is the life of their teacher, Howard “Howard the Coward” Fallon, a failed poet and deeply insecure man engaged in a destructive affair with a fellow teacher. This man is a deeply tragic individual who to me, represents the adult life of these boys. He isn't much and he obviously feels like he has failed in life. It's sad to think that this is what they will grow into but then again, they are somewhat privileged in the sense that they have an education. It's just, by looking at this teacher, is it really worth the work?

The school itself is shown as a morally compromised institution, focused on image, wealth, and discipline rather than emotional care or truth. This is why when we start to dig into Skippy's death, we realise that it was not an isolated event - there is a chain of neglect and bullying, there's a chain of horrifying circumstances which led to it. The whole book is simply about putting that jigsaw together and Paul Murray has made an incredible story about adolescence to show us.

There's humour, there's grief and there's everything being turned upside down. The more you read the book, the less sardonic it seems and the more upsetting it becomes. The satire is strong and the way in which we learn about the different circumstances that led up to Skippy's death makes more sense than there being just one isolated event. It is a brilliant novel and it probably in my opinion, the best thing this writer has ever written.