Skippy Dies (2010) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

show spoilers

Characters/People edit see section history

• Howard: Add a description of this character.
• Ruprecht
• Skippy
• Howard Fallon: Known mockingly as "Howard the Coward." He is a history teacher at Seabrook College.
• Ruprecht Van Doren: An overweight genius that excels in doughnut eating contests and is highly interested in 10th dimensional string theory. He is Skippy's roommate and friend.
• Daniel "Skippy" Juster: The title character, Skippy is the subject of scrutiny by the Acting Principal and viewed as an average kid by Howard and his swimming coach, Tom. Skippy pursues Lori and spends much of his time playing a videogame, contacting/watching Lori, and avoiding discussing his mother's medical condition.
• Kopf
• Geoff
• Carl: Lori's drug-fueled kind-of boyfriend. He is a part-time dealer and full-time bully.
• Farley
• Blick
• Mario: One of Skippy's friends and classmates. He is often found talking about his skills as a ladies' man and bragging about his Italian heritage.
• Daniel
• Boden
• Dennis: Cynical 'friend'
• Gott
• Mann
• Fenster
• Dann
• Ende
• Frau
• Zimmer
• Wasser
• Greg
• Lori: The object of both Skippy's and Carl's affections. She is a student at St. Brigid's.
• Krieg
• Der Junge
• Stirn
• Tom
• Mr. Juster
• Mr Farley: A teacher at Seabrook College, and was a classmate of Howard's during his days as a Seabrook student.
• Geld
• Stelle
• Erde
• Miss Mcintyre
• Lehrer
• Seabrook
• Schulter
• Bett
• Sie
• Mund
• Pater Foley
• Guido
• Tisch
• Tage
• Himmel
• Barry: Carl's friend and fellow amateur drug-dealer.
• Danke
• Halley: Howard Fallon's live-in American girlfriend.
• Geoff Sproke: A friend of Skippy's and member of the anniversary concert quartet.
• Niall
• Greg Costigan: The Acting Principal of Seabrook College who optimistically hopes that he will be appointed full Principal.
• Tom Roche: A former classmate of Howard's that was seriously injured as a teenager. He is now disabled and coaches the swim team at Seabrook.
• Janine: Lori's friend and a student at St. Brigid's.
• Bill
• Miss Aurelie Mcintyre: A substitute teacher at Seabrook filling in for Finnian O' Dalaigh teaching geography.
• Trudy: The wife of the Acting Principal, Mr. Costigan. She is a graduate of St. Brigid's.
• Steve Reece
• Laughton
• Father Jerome Green: A priest and French teacher at Seabrook College. He is viewed as one of the most intimidating faculty members of the school.
• Father Foley
• Trevor Hickey
• Wallace Willis
• Jim Slattery: An English teacher at Seabrook that is very enthusiastic about his subject area. He is one of the older member of the teaching staff, and was Howard and Farley's teacher during their school days.
• Hideo Tamashi: Ruprecht's idol and a famous physicist affiliated with Stanford university.
• Einstein: Arguably the most famous scientist in the world, and generator of theories of the structure of the universe.
• Finnian O' Dálaigh: A geography teacher at Seabrook that was out for an extended time due to gall stone issues.
• Victor
• Desmond Furlong
• Brian "Jeekers" Prendergast: He is one of the top students in his class at Seabrook College and a member of the musical quartet as the viola player.
• David
• Zhang: The employee working at Ed's Doughnut House the night that Skippy dies.

Quotes edit see section history

• “The tang of adolescence, impervious to deodorant or opened windows, hangs heavy, and the air tintinnabulates with bleeps, chimes and trebly shards of music as two hundred mobile phones, banned during the school day, are switched back on with the urgency of divers reconnecting to their oxygen supply.”

• “... <T>hey simply do not have the capacity to relate to the past, their own or anyone else's. They live in a continuous sugar-rused present, in which remembering is a chore left to computers, like tidying your room is a chore left for the Third World maid.”

  Howard

• “To be bored is really a crime. It's an insult to everyone who doesn't have money and power and freedom.”

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• ‘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.’

  Highlighted by 171 Kindle customers

• Gradually the awful truth dawns on you: that Santa Claus was just the tip of the iceberg – that your future will not be the rollercoaster ride you’d imagined, that the world occupied by your parents, the world of washing the dishes, going to the dentist, weekend trips to the DIY superstore to buy floor-tiles, is actually largely what people mean when they speak of ‘life’.

  Highlighted by 163 Kindle customers

• Now, with every day that passes, another door seems to close, the one marked PROFESSIONAL STUNTMAN, or FIGHT EVIL ROBOT, until as the weeks go by and the doors – GET BITTEN BY SNAKE, SAVE WORLD FROM ASTEROID, DISMANTLE BOMB WITH SECONDS TO SPARE – keep closing, you begin to hear the sound as a good thing, and start closing some yourself, even ones that didn’t necessarily need to be closed . . .

  Highlighted by 119 Kindle customers

• A man called Brodsky once said, “If there is any substitute for love, it is memory.”

  Highlighted by 100 Kindle customers

• Maybe instead of strings it’s stories things are made of, an infinite number of tiny vibrating stories; once upon a time they all were part of one big giant superstory, except it got broken up into a jillion different pieces, that’s why no story on its own makes any sense, and so what you have to do in a life is try and weave it back together, my story into your story, our stories into all the other people’s we know, until you’ve got something that to God or whoever might look like a letter or even a whole word . . .

  Highlighted by 92 Kindle customers

• Our universe, one could almost say, is actually built out of loneliness; and that foundational loneliness persists upwards to haunt every one of its residents.

  Highlighted by 92 Kindle customers

• If he could just be certain that this was the life he wanted, and not just the life he’d ended up with because he was afraid to go after the one he wanted.

  Highlighted by 89 Kindle customers

• His name was Paul Éluard, and he said this thing once: There is another world, but it is in this one.

  Highlighted by 84 Kindle customers

• But the fact is – the fact is that they live in a world of facts, one of which is that there are no dragons; there are only the pale torpid days, stringing by one like another, a clouded necklace of imitation pearls, and a love binding him to a life he never actually chose. Is this all it’s ever going to be? A grey tapestry of okayness? Frozen in a moment he drifted into?

  Highlighted by 78 Kindle customers

• ‘Sometimes the reason we do not see the answer is that we are looking too closely at the question,’ a voice says.

  Highlighted by 53 Kindle customers

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• St. Brigid
• Konzert
• Sind
• Händen
• Fach
• Urknall
• Hügel
• Africa: One of the old sites of goodwill work that the priests of Seabrook spent time at and frequently reminisce about.
• Seil
• Dublin: The capital of Ireland
• Irland
• Wissenschaft
• Spind
• Frühstück
• Ireland: Country that Seabrook is located in and the novel is set in.
• New York
• Italy
• America
• London
• Our Lady’s Hall
• Seabrook College: A boarding school in Dublin.

First Sentence edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Paul Murray (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Amazon Best of the Month (September 2010, #2)
• National Book Critics Circle Award (Finalist, 2010: Fiction)
• Costa Book Award (Finalist, 2010: Novel)
• Man Booker Prize (Finalist, 2010, Longlist)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 813

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction

Books with Additional Background Information edit see section history