Skippy Dies

Paul Murray's Skippy Dies gave me more insight into adolescent boys than I ever wanted to have. As the parent of not one, but two future such creatures, I spent some time cringing over details of how 13-15 year old boys in Irish boarding schools spend their off hours, at least according to one author. The book itself is a little more cosmic than the nasty little habits of boys and Murray does try to cram a whole lot into his 661 pages and sometimes, admittedly, he lost me, but I was eager to follow his characters.

The title character does indeed die, and in the first few pages no less. Normally, this would seem like an impedement to plot, but as soon as Skippy dies, we veer back in time to another person's perspective. Murray really knows the milieu. He's got the posh school caricatures down well, the angry, possibly pedophile priest teaching French (His name rendered in French neatly emphasizes his proclivity), the ruined former athlete as coach, the middling former student returned in disgrace from his high-finance job to teach history to boys who don't care, the sexy replacement teacher (though she's just a distraction here), the excitable music teacher...etc. The list of adults goes on, none better rendered than the presumptive new head of school. He's interim and he's a lay person, unlike his ailing predecessor Father Furlong. Murray has a perfect ear for this character and perhaps captures him best. We first meet Costigan, known as the Automator, when Skippy takes ill in class. The head asks the history teacher about him:

He was involved in an incident today in Father Green's French class, an incident of vomiting...Who is this kid, Howard? Priest asks him a question, he vomits all over the place?...Apparently he likes to call himself Slippy.
What's that about? He a slippery customer, that it?
"Actually, I think it's Skippy."
"Skippy!" the Automator says derisively, "Well , that makes even less
sense!
...Set him straight... Vomiting in the classroom is definitely not something we want catching on. Time and a place for vomiting, and the classroom is not it. Think you could teach a class, Howard, with kids vomiting everywhere?"

Everything conspires to make Skippy look like he's up to something, and the Automator is always there to notice, but really, Skippy is just a geeky boy in love with the wrong girl, a girl who in turn is in love with a budding and dangerous drug dealer who, of course despises Skippy beyond all reason. Skippy is the classic geek who is less-geeky than those he hangs around with, the one you're sure will eventually grow up to be recognized as an interesting person. His brilliant friend Ruprecht doesn't seem headed quite so well into the wider world and bets are off on the rest of the little gang, but it's fascinating to eavesdrop on their lives (even if disturbing from a female parent point of view).

The story barrels along nicely until Skippy's death and then it veers terribly, terribly off-course, which is fitting. Without their glue, the gang of geeks falls apart, teachers are exposed or not for their roles in his unexpected death, love is examined and found wanting. In all, the book becomes darker and more crazed. There are moments in the resolution that are satisfying (like the final concert), and some that are a bit heavy-handed. A fire, really? If that wasn't an obvious enough symbol, there's a priest around to name it for what it is: hell fire.


But Murray knows his way around the male adolescent (and presumably quasi-boarding school life). He doesn't capture the girls and women as well, but they are symbols or obstacles, or plot devices to the story of a group of people thrown together. The putting away of childish things is more of a sad thing in the end, so I prefer to remember how Murray explains it earlier in the book, as the school boys are auditioning for a talent show/concert. The Automator envisions Pachelbel's Canon in D, the boys imagine lighting farts on stage.

Among the two-hundred plus boys, there is scarcely anyone who does not have some ability or idiosyncracy or weird body condition for which he is celebrated.
As with so many things at this particular point in their lives, though, that situation is changing by the day. School, with its endless emphasis on conformity, careers, the Future, may be partly to blame, but the key to shift in attitudes is, without a doubt, girls. Until recently the opinion of girls was of little consequence;now--overnight, almost--it is paramount; and girls have quite different, some would go so far as to say deeply conservative, criteria with regard to what constitutes a gift. They do not care how many golf balls you can fit in your mouth; they are unmoved by third nipples; they do not, most of them, consider mastery of [flaming farts] to be a feather in your cap... As the juggernaut of puberty gathers momentum, quirks and oddities and singularities turn from badges of honour to liablities to be concealed.

Skippy Dies is an interesting, if overly-long book, that starts strong but veers crazily off into a sadder reality. This is on purpose, I'm sure, and it's still a good read, but now I'm supposed to dive into Catcher in the Rye (for the third time) and I'm having trouble summoning up the courage to read about more alienated youth.