Skippy Dies

The title caught my attention!  So simple, yet it gives away the ending, or beginning.  The picture is not the publication I read.  Mine was one complete book, and I heard about it from one of my numerous book blogs.

Even though the title gave away the premise of the book, and the first chapter has Skippy dying, it was very easy to fall into the story and enjoy the characters.  The book actually takes place in a boys school in Dublin, where some of the students are living in on campus dorms.  The boys are in their second year, which puts them in their early teens, and many passages had me actually laughing out loud to their antics. 

Teachers and Priests are part of the story, Seabrooke being a Catholic school.  The sadness comes in when there are hints of the child abuse that is surrounding the church these days.  Skippy and a fellow student Carl are caught up in some psychological problems that started at home, and both struggle to understand their problems.  The ending was the expanded version of the first chapter, and how the students each deal with the unfortunate events surrounding Skippy's death. 

The book did take me a whole week to finish, but I'm glad I stuck with it.