"Skippy Dies," by Paul Murray (Faber and Faber, 672 pp.)
Skippy, a 14-year-old student at Dublin’s Seabrook College, dies in the first pages of this "knockout" of a boarding-school novel. The next 650-odd pages examine Skippy's life, and, according to Monitor reviewer Yvonne Zipp, author Paul Murray manages to make readers "care deeply about what happened to the 14-year-old boy and his friends, from his pudgy roommate, a budding mad scientist who wants to open portals to other worlds, to the girl Skippy loved." (CSMonitor review, 9/20/10)
