In some ways this melodramatic school story is a mess - but a very readable mess that somehow Paul Murray manages to turn into an excellent novel.It's set in a Dublin public school and features the hopes, loves, fears and foibles of both staff and pupils.
Ruprecht is an overweight genius whose hobbies include very difficult maths and the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. Daniel ‘Skippy’ Juster is his roommate. Nobody pays either of them much attention until Skippy falls for the gorgeous Lori from the girls’ school next door. When amazingly (unbelievably?) Lori responds positively to him he incurs the wrath of Carl, part-time drug-dealer and full-time psychopath. Then there's the old-boy history teacher who starts a disastrous affair with the stand-in geography teacher, the devious acting head and... You get the idea - it's complicated. But great fun in a tragi-comic sort of way.
As I'm Australian, I really panicked when I saw this title - don't do that to me, John!
ReplyDelete