Skippy Dies

#958
Title: Skippy Dies
Author: Paul Murray
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Year: 2010
661 pages

4.5, rounded up, though I'd have liked an emotionally crisper ending. In the many reviews I've read, there's not a lot of mention of the novel's structure, which is obvious at times but doesn't feel too lock-step because Murray uses humor to make parallelism entertaining rather than mechanical. The characters are believable, the emotional content becomes increasingly nuanced, and there's a great deal that's funny and dramatic without a lot of pathos. I was friends with people like many of these boys, though most of them didn't die at the time.

When I consider this novel in relation to the criticism Rowling received for sex, drugs, teen angst, obscenity, and small-sphere politics in The Casual Vacancy, I'm more convinced than ever that the criticism was about that book not being Harry Potter. Skippy Dies is like blending The Casual Vacancy with a handful of rock and roll, a copy of Hustler, and just a pinch of Lord of the Flies. Characters from this book and Rowling's would easily understand the structure and rules of each others' communities.

The audiobook was a delight, with clear reading by multiple narrators.