Chefs don't have time to write. While I was working on Smoke and Pickles, I was running a restaurant — a daily regimen of testing recipes,...
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Denzel, January 3, 2011 (view all comments by Denzel)
My favorite book of 2010 came as an addition to my indiespesible subscription. Paul Murray accomplishes so much in this book that it could stand as a text for all pipe dream novelists who want to test the limits of narrative without making a boring experimental mess. Characters float between first person to third, answer questions in interview form, never ever loose humor or personality, but better yet guess what he doesn't do: write text in a pyramid structure, begin the story on the jacket, or any of that gimmicky garbage. This book is so much fun to read it'll make you wonder how he was able to do it all so easily. Serious without being serious, endlessly hopeful and sad. I find this book an inspiration just as I found dandelion wine; it's most needing of a puddly award.
catfish, January 2, 2011 (view all comments by catfish)
I couldn't stop reading this book. NOt only did I want to find out the cause of SKippy's untimely death, but I was totally engrossed in the story of this Catholic boys school its misfit students and their ambivalent yet creative young teacher, and a host of other fascinating characters. Sad yet darkly funny, and very real.
autarcheia, January 2, 2011 (view all comments by autarcheia)
A brisk, breezy read but this gem is also empathetic and touching. Franzen is not the only one writing "literary fiction" this year.
Talk about a spoiler! Yes, Skippy dies. (Or maybe he doesn't. I'll never tell.) But the fact of his death isn't nearly as important as the why, which Paul Murray's Dublin-set novel explores with a dizzying mix of hilarity and tragedy that's never less than thrilling.
by Rico
"Review"
by Booklist (starred review),
"At 672 pages, this is an extremely ambitious and complex novel, filled with parallels, with sometimes recondite references to Irish folklore, with quantum physics, and with much more. Hilarious, haunting, and heartbreaking, it is inarguably among the most memorable novels of the year to date."
"Review"
by The Sunday Times,
"The novel is a triumph....Brimful of wit, narrative energy and a real poetry and vision."
"Review"
by Kirkus Reviews (starred review),
"[A] splendid, sardonic magnum opus....Long and impossibly involved, but also beautifully written, with much truth and not a wasted word. A superb imagining of a strange world — that of pimply-faced kids, that is."
"Review"
by The Guardian (U.K.),
"One of the most enjoyable, funny and moving reads of this young new year."
"Review"
by Elle,
"An utterly engrossing read."
"Review"
by The Times (U.K.),
"Noisy, hilarious, tragic, and endlessly inventive...Murray's writing is just plain brilliant."
"Review"
by The Irish Times,
"A blast of a book."
"Synopsis"
by Ingram,
Why does Skippy, a 14-year-old boy at Dublin's venerable Seabrook College, end up dead on the floor of the local doughnut shop? Why Skippy dies and what happens next unravels a mystery that links the boys of Seabrook College to their parents and teachers in ways nobody could have imagined.
"Synopsis"
by Netread,
Why does Skippy, a fourteen-year-old boy at Dublins venerable Seabrook College, end up dead on the floor of the local doughnut shop?
Could it have something to do with his friend Ruprecht Van Doren, an overweight genius who is determined to open a portal into a parallel universe using ten-dimensional string theory?
Could it involve Carl, the teenage drug dealer and borderline psychotic who is Skippys rival in love?
Or could “the Automator”—the ruthless, smooth-talking headmaster intent on modernizing the school—have something to hide?
Why Skippy dies and what happens next is the subject of this dazzling and uproarious novel, unraveling a mystery that links the boys of Seabrook College to their parents and teachers in ways nobody could have imagined. With a cast of characters that ranges from hip-hop-loving fourteen-year-old Eoin “MC Sexecutioner” Flynn to basketball playing midget Philip Kilfether, packed with questions and answers on everything from Ritalin, to M-theory, to bungee jumping, to the hidden meaning of the poetry of Robert Frost, Skippy Dies is a heartfelt, hilarious portrait of the pain, joy, and occasional beauty of adolescence, and a tragic depiction of a world always happy to sacrifice its weakest members. As the twenty-first century enters its teenage years, this is a breathtaking novel from a young writer who will come to define his generation.
"Synopsis"
by Netread,
Why does Skippy, a fourteen-year-old boy at Dublins venerable Seabrook College, end up dead on the floor of the local doughnut shop?
Could it have something to do with his friend Ruprecht Van Doren, an overweight genius who is determined to open a portal into a parallel universe using ten-dimensional string theory?
Could it involve Carl, the teenage drug dealer and borderline psychotic who is Skippys rival in love?
Or could “the Automator”—the ruthless, smooth-talking headmaster intent on modernizing the school—have something to hide?
Why Skippy dies and what happens next is the subject of this dazzling and uproarious novel, unraveling a mystery that links the boys of Seabrook College to their parents and teachers in ways nobody could have imagined. With a cast of characters that ranges from hip-hop-loving fourteen-year-old Eoin “MC Sexecutioner” Flynn to basketballplaying midget Philip Kilfether, packed with questions and answers on everything from Ritalin, to M-theory, to bungee jumping, to the hidden meaning of the poetry of Robert Frost, Skippy Dies is a heartfelt, hilarious portrait of the pain, joy, and occasional beauty of adolescence, and a tragic depiction of a world always happy to sacrifice its weakest members. As the twenty-first century enters its teenage years, this is a breathtaking novel from a young writer who will come to define his generation.
Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and eBooks — here at Powells.com.
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