Skippy Dies

Skippy Dies, published in 2010, is a tragicomic novel by Irish author Paul Murray. Murray originally wrote the novel as a short story before expanding it into a longform work of fiction, basing the Catholic boarding school where the book is set on the prestigious secondary school the author attended in Dublin.

The novel was nominated for the longlists and shortlists of several distinguished awards, including the Booker Prize, the Irish Novel of the Year, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It focuses on the students and teachers at the stately Seabrook College, whose lives are upended by the sudden death of the novel’s titular character, Daniel “Skippy” Juster. The novel examines adolescence through the experiences of teens and adults and the intersection of individual and shared grief while also critiquing norms and abuses on an institutional level.

This guide refers to the First American Edition of the novel, published by Faber and Faber in 2010.

Content Warning: The source material includes depictions of drug abuse and addiction, sexual abuse and violence, racist language and violence against Asian people, mental illness, self-harm, death by suicide, and anti-gay language and attitudes. The novel also takes place in a Catholic educational institution where some of these abuses are systematically hidden by its authority figures. This guide touches on most of these topics.

Plot Summary

The novel begins with the death of Daniel “Skippy” Juster, a second-year boarding student at Seabrook College, who collapses during a doughnut-eating contest he is attending with his roommate, Ruprecht Van Doren. Before dying, Skippy manages to write the words “TELL LORI” on the floor of the doughnut shop.

The novel flashes back to earlier in the academic term. Skippy’s growing anxiety around an upcoming swim race is managed with painkillers, and he worries over his mother’s cancer, which he has chosen not to disclose to anyone at school. Ruprecht, on the other hand, is obsessed with studying the origins of the universe, probing into a new theory about parallel universes hidden by a mysterious 11th dimension. The novel also introduces two other major characters at Seabrook: Carl Cullen and Howard Fallon. Carl is a bully who starts selling drugs with his best friend, Barry, when he realizes that it can get him closer to a girl named Lori. Howard is a teacher who, despite his committed relationship with an American woman named Halley, becomes infatuated with Aurelie McIntyre, the substitute geography teacher.

Skippy’s pill consumption causes him to vomit in class, drawing the attention of the school’s acting principal, Gregory “Greg” Costigan, and the priest in whose class Skippy became sick, Father Jerome Green. The acting principal instructs Howard to check in with Skippy, but he fails to follow through after being distracted by Aurelie. Skippy soon discovers the existence of Lori when he sees her playing frisbee outside. He is largely unaware that Lori performs sexual favors for Carl in exchange for drugs, but he endeavors to meet her anyway. An opportunity presents itself at a mid-term mixer between Seabrook and Lori’s school, St. Brigid’s. When Carl fails to show up at the mixer, Skippy is forced by his friends to say hi to Lori. The two eventually leave the mixer together, running around town under the influence of drugs. Likewise, Howard volunteers as a chaperone for the mixer and briefly exits with Aurelie, and the two of them have sex in her classroom. Carl finally arrives at the mixer with a large supply of drugs that he uses to spike the punch bowl at the mixer, causing it to turn into an orgy.

Greg is furious with Howard and Aurelie. Howard, spurred by guilt and a desire to pursue a relationship with Aurelie, breaks up with Halley. He soon learns that Aurelie has withdrawn from the school to go on holiday with her fiancé.

After the midterm break, Ruprecht constructs a device that will enable him to travel from one universe to another. When he demonstrates the device for his friends, he is shocked to find that it works. He fails to replicate the demonstration, however, and devises several schemes to improve it, including using it over a potential energy site at St. Brigid’s. Most of these plans fail, which discourages him.

Carl and Barry fall in with a group of drug dealers, and Carl discovers that Lori has started seeing a boy named Daniel. He soon deduces that Daniel is Skippy. Carl bullies him over the course of his blossoming relationship with Lori, so Skippy challenges Carl to a fight and wins.

Lori senses Skippy’s dissatisfaction with swimming and encourages him to quit the swim team, which he is hesitant to do. He is visited by the swimming coach, Tom Roche, who previously gave him his painkillers, and convinces him to reconsider. Skippy’s anxiety reaches a peak after a congruence of events that involve Carl and Lori’s continued sexual relationship, his parents’ absence, implied molestation at the hands of Tom, and Howard’s scolding. Skippy takes an overdose of pills and dies by suicide at the doughnut shop.

In the wake of Skippy’s death, Howard discovers that Tom had sexually molested Skippy. He brings it up to the school board, but the acting principal decides to downplay its impact on recent events, softly blaming the boy’s distress on his mother’s illness and Father Green’s implied sexual misconduct. Meanwhile, one of Ruprecht’s friends, Dennis, reveals that he had manipulated the results of Ruprecht’s portal experiment, causing him to realize that it never worked in the first place. This heightens Ruprecht’s grief, and he turns his research efforts toward finding a way to communicate with Skippy in the afterlife. Lori starves herself and collapses in school, which causes her parents to commit her to a rehabilitation facility. Carl begins to see the ghost of Skippy following him.

To retaliate against the school’s inaction, Howard takes his second-year students out on an impromptu field trip, using history lessons on Ireland’s participation in World War I to connect to their collective grief over the loss of Skippy. He is suspended from teaching and is disabused of the notion that Aurelie might ever enter a relationship with him. Ruprecht consults Howard for his new experiment, and though Howard assures him that trying to talk to spirits is impossible, Ruprecht attempts to use music waves to reach Skippy. He conspires with Lori and his friends to stage an experimental performance of Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” at the school’s 140th anniversary concert, ultimately disrupting the event.

Carl, under the influence of heroin, is convinced by the ghost of Skippy to defeat Father Green with fire. He sets fire to the school, killing the priest, but is rescued by Howard. Ruprecht and Lori connect over their shared grief. The novel ends with Principal Greg Costigan reassuring the school community after the destruction of Seabrook.