A tragic comedy of epic sweep and dimension, Skippy Dies wrings every last drop of humour and hopelessness out of life, love, mermaids, M-theory, the poetry of Robert Graves, and all the mysteries of the human heart.
Why does Skippy, a fourteen-year-old boy 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,
Could it involve Carl, the teenage drug dealer and borderline psychotic who is Skippy’s 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. — Book promo @ goodreads.com
I have finished my Interstate 5 virtual walk. I started at the US-Mexico border on 18 March 2024 and finished at the US-Canada border on 15 June 2025 for a total of 1,380 miles. The same day that I finished I-5 I started Interstate 90, the longest Interstate in the United States. The start is not quite on the Pacific and the other end is not quite on the Atlantic but it is close to being from one ocean to the other as I-5 was from border to border. I’m not sure that I will do it all, we will see. For now my goal is to go from Seattle, WA to Sioux Falls, SD which will be just a little more miles that what I did on I-5 (about a year and a half of walking).
Finished all my month end chores and ready for the new month which I hope includes getting a rebuilt engine installed in Desperado. I would like to think that I will get A/C back also but have accepted the fact that there is no one within 150 miles that is going to do it.