Skippy Dies.

In the first few pages of this book, Skippy turns purple in a doughnut shop, falls onto the floor, writes a half-message in raspberry filling with his finger, and then, of course, dies.

The book then cycles back in time, splits itself into thirds - Hopeland, Heartland, and Ghostland - and gives us the whole story. It's about a private boarding school in Ireland called Seabrook. It's about the 14 year old boys who live there. It's about the teachers that teach there. It's about string theory and the 11 dimensions of space and time. It's about Irish folklore and repressed Fathers and diet pills and watching girls through telescopes and Hallowe'en dances and text messaging. And then it's about death.

I loved some of this book. The science experiments, the nervous breakdowns, bad boy Carl stealing fireworks to trade for diet pills to trade for blowjobs and anal sex, the musings on space and time and the fabric of reality. I liked all that. Other things, the 14-year-old dialogue, the lighting of farts into fire, the long tirades about priests and repressed homosexuality, and private school behind-closed-door dealings, the rather unlikable 2-dimensional adults... It's 661 pages, and Paul Murray tries to cram in, it seems, everything he's ever learned about the world. Some of it is fascinating. Some of it ends up being rather masturbatory.

But the book is fun, and it's fast, and you get to like Skippy so much that you forget what the book is called, until about halfway through, when you remember again, and then you get sad because you know that Skippy Dies.