Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray, page 556: "The truth is messy and chaotic and all over the place. Often it just doesn’t make sense. Stories make things make sense, but the way they do that is to leave out anything that doesn’t fit. And often that is quite a lot."
The author from an interview in the The Paris Review - "I had one basic concept that tied all of the disparate themes together: Each of these people was looking for a big narrative arc, big feelings, and getting themselves into really big trouble as a result."
Boys' school, science/psuedo science, drugs, love, sex, crime, video games, teen angst, bullies, violence, passion, failure, affairs, scandal, death, history, money, shame, deceit and doughnuts - just a short off-the-top-of-my-head list of things that I remember from this novel. There is both tragedy and comedy - but what really pulled me in on my first reading were all of the hidden stories, forgotten/concealed - tragic/mundane, interacting/overlapping - surfacing/hidden, with no complete intersection or moment when all is revealed. I suppose that I found more tragedy than comedy - but also somehow a hint of strange hopeful magic.
Rating: 5 of 5 First Read Date: December 2012
CM