Review: Skippy Dies

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I don't think I've ever read a book like this before, especially in terms of style. I kind of liked the way that the story flowed; chapters ran into each other and joined up, the teen-aged monologues were appropriately lacking in punctuation and capital letters. The characters were all very interesting/psychopathic/broken and it was fun being drip-fed information about them until the full picture was revealed.

This book made me quite uneasy at the same time. I felt really affected by the character of Carl and for some reason absolutely repulsed during his encounter with 'The Druid'. It wasn't THAT long ago that I was a teenager and (I get this feeling when I watch SKINS also)I can't ever remember my life being so filled with sex and drugs! Hmm, maybe I was a boring teenager!

Anyway. I only gave this 2 stars (2 and a half would have been perfect) because while I enjoyed the unique style and the weaving together of all the characters and stories, I also found the parts on string theory a little boring (science is not for me) and sometimes the descriptive 'dreamscape' type scenes were heavy going and a bit too caught up in their own sense of 'dreamscape' and/or drug induced surrealism. I suspect this makes no sense really, but neither did those scenes.

It's true what it says on the blurb; this book is very dark (obviously considering the themes being played out) sometimes very funny and touching and overall an ode to life not being fair and the process of growing up and realising this. Bittersweet.



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