The Irish Novel 1960 - 2010

2010: Paul Murray, Skippy Dies

which will always be associated with the World Trade Center – a source of amazement as opposed to a site of murder, an expression of individual daredevilry instead of a manifestation of impersonal enmity, a tribute to reaching rather than collapsing. And yet, appalling as the attacks of September 11 were, faith in the potential of interconnectedness embraces it as well. Tilly is moved by the poems of Rumi. And this novel’s title comes from Tennyson’s ‘Locksley Hall’, a work indebted to the ‘Mu’allaqat’, a poem from ancient Arabia. Supplementary Reading Joseph Lennon, ‘Colum McCann’, in Michael R. Molino (ed.), Twenty-First-Century British and Irish Novelists (Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2003), pp. 181–91 Jennifer Levasseur and Kevin Rabalais, ‘Interview with Colum McCann’, Glimmer Train, no. 69 (2009), pp. 56–73 John Cusatis, Understanding Colum McCann (Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2011) Eóin Flannery, Colum McCann: The Aesthetics of Redemption (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2011) Also Published in 2009 John Banville, The Infinities; Kevin Casey, A State of Mind; Jennifer Johnston, Truth or Fiction; Claire Kilroy, All the Names Have Been Changed; Hugh Maxton, 20/16 Vision; Peter Murphy, John the Revelator 2010 Paul Murray, Skippy Dies Murray (b. 1975), a native of Dublin, is also the author of the novel An Evening of Long Goodbyes (2003). Daniel ‘Skippy’ Juster is a second-year boarder at Seabrook College, a highly reputed secondary south County Dublin school run by the Paraclete Fathers (modelled, it appears, on Blackrock College, run by the Holy Ghost Fathers). During a doughnut-eating competition with his room-mate, Ruprecht van Doren, Skippy collapses and dies. To this, the novel’s opening event, it is tempting to apply the well-known acronym ‘gubu’ – grotesque, unprecedented, bizarre, unbelievable – adjectives that may also be applied to much of the subsequent action. Life at Seabrook, which is the novel’s main focus, proves particularly susceptible to such epithets for a number of reasons. The school is in nothing like the stable state it claims for itself by virtue of its 180 THE IRISH NOVEL 1960–2010 reputation and tradition. Change is in the air, but the way it is being handled is hamfisted, at best. The old clerical order is passing, its ingrained pastoral values now in such a state of decay as to be a menace to the boys under its care, as is exemplified by Father Green, also known as Père Vert. His charitable ministrations to the lower-class denizens of nearby St Patrick’s Villas are further opportunities for sexual predation. The new, lay, regime is headed by Greg Costigan, nicknamed the Automator, a crass autocrat whose understanding of education has nothing to do with pastoral responsibility and everything to do with image and fund-raising, concerns that he articulates in the neologisms and clichés of managerial lingo. The old and new administrative ethos appear to be at odds with each other. At the same time, however, they both are equally and self-servingly indifferent to their effects on the youngsters entrusted to them. But Seabrook is also on shaky ground on account of these same youngsters. As adolescents undergoing their own state of transition, they naturally display disdain for learning and authority, and their limited attention span is devoted to acting cool, bullying, constructing a plausible heterosexual identity and playing video games. The degree to which they seem ineducable – at least by the school’s unreflecting and unchanging methods – is perhaps overstated. But the fact that the main evidence for their self-willed ignorance is found in history class has an obvious resonance, and in addition emphasises the all-consuming character of the present moment in their minds – for which they are not entirely at fault. The only class in which an interest is shown is geography and that is because it is taught by the very attractive Aurelie McIntyre. She is on a brief break from her career in finance, and her allure is also noticed by Seabrook alumnus, failed financial analyst and current Seabrook history teacher, Howard Fallon, with predictable consequences for his relationship with his live-in American partner, Halley. In many ways, masters and boys resemble each other, though the system in which they are involved will work only if this resemblance is never acknowledged. As a result, school is a place where worlds collide – the different realms of staff and students, those of the old regime and the new, those of an old...