Skippy Dies

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Why does Skippy, a student at Dublin's 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, who is determined to open a portal into a parallel universe using ten-dimensional string theory? Or Carl, the teenage drug dealer who is Skippy's rival in love?

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You might love this... or not. submitted by ginarae3 on August 8, 2014, 8:04pm This is the first book in a very long time that I have no been able to finish. I am half-way into this novel, at approximately page 325, and I just don't have the strength to finish. This is a very polarizing novel, people either love it, or they hate it. I am not loving it. There are too many books out there that I want to spend time with to give up my precious life on this one. Sorry Skippy Dies, but you just are not for me. Despite loving literary topics such as private schools, teenage boys, and death, I just can't do it.

it's not bad.... submitted by Kikumatsu97 on July 27, 2015, 3:46pm It's not any good either. ; o p
Skippy, buddy, I am sorry. I wanted to hear out your story, but some of these people around you tried my patience too far.

From the moment I started reading Skippy Dies, I couldn't stop thinking that I could be reading something better instead. More than 150 pages later, I was still thinking the same. I decided I didn't want to continue reading about a couple of teenagers (except Skippy and Ruprecht) being kind of d*cks and the dismal life of one uninteresting adult.

Depressing and Angering view of Adolesence submitted by deets on August 6, 2015, 1:49pm This book is full of bullies, and too much like reality, the bully more often wins than not. It is a novel of teenage male desires, given in nothing but the basest stereotypes, friendships that seem to be based on giving each other as much sh*t as possible, in a not even remotely lighthearted or endearing way, and basically glorifying a dog eat dog view of life. The boarding school in which Skippy lives only boards a tiny fraction of the students who attend, so we are led to believe that the main characters all come from lousy homes, with uncaring parents who "dumped" their sons here.
There were times I wanted to give up reading this novel, mainly because I couldn't stand the attitudes, the "humor" was never beyond the level of entirely nasty, and the end was assured from the very start to be a bad one. And yet, at other times I felt myself becoming emotionally invested in the underdog, and hoping really beyond all hope that it would "all be ok". This was one of those novels where I sighed a huge sigh of relief when it was over. I did not want even one more page.