Skippy Dies (Paul Murray)

This is the story of a private Catholic boys' school in Ireland and various people connected with it: the boys, their teachers, their girl friends, and their neighbors. Skippy does indeed die in the first pages. Two-thirds of the book describe the events leading up to his death, and the remaining third describes the aftermath. This book is excruciatingly well-written; the dialogue, the settings, the events, the interactions--all are drawn with precision and clarity. This makes the book even harder to take, as the events described are painful in the extreme. The story is saturated with drugs, sexual abuse, lies, betrayal, cruelty both casual and sadistic, and the utter futility of trying to oppose any of this. Nothing in this story is uplifting or ennobling. I found it gloomy, depressing, and infuriating. Not recommended.