The teenage boys at Dublin's prestigious Seabrook College aren't wizards like some boarding-school kids we know. They're just regular 14-year-olds — nerdy, snarky, lovelorn and stumped by the mysteries of life, death and history class. When Skippy, the quietest and most lovelorn of them all, draws his prematurely final breath in the novel's opening scene, the boys in Paul Murray's novel are pushed to crossroads of faith and reason; there's magic in the way Murray draws them through the crisis and over the threshold of adulthood. Skippy Dies is one of the liveliest and most poignant books of the year, and it will leave you eager for whatever Murray writes next.