GENRE: CONTEMPORARY FICTION/SATIRE

Paul Murray is a master of tragic-comedic satire. You laugh heartily, but a dark heart beats beneath the humour. I love this book at the same time as I am absolutely revolted by some of the characters.

‘Skippy’ is Daniel “Skippy” Juster, so nicknamed because of his unfortunate resemblance to a certain TV kangaroo. He’s a boarder at Seabrook College, an expensive Catholic school in Dublin, and is at that unfortunate age where “suddenly everyone was tall and gangling and talking about drinking and sperm. Walking among them is like ­being in a BO-smelling forest.” For an ex-teacher (me), there are many unpleasant memories in that.

Skippy’s best friend is the corpulent computer genius Ruprecht, and the novel opens with Ruprecht and Skippy having a doughnut-eating race at Ed’s, the local hangout for Seabrook students. To Ruprecht’s baffled horror, Skippy collapses off his chair. He isn’t choking, but there’s nothing Ruprecht can do except watch as Skippy writes “Tell Lori” on the floor in doughnut jam before expiring. I’m not always a fan of prologues, but this one kept me reading through the icky bits when I’d normally call it enough because I started to think I might know what killed Skippy. The story rewinds and expands after the death scene, encompassing not only what Skippy meant and who Lori is, but also Howard the Coward, a history teacher returned in shame from an abortive ­career in the City.

Spending most of his time failing to avoid the ­obnoxious attentions of the management speak-spouting acting head, Howard lives with his American girlfriend Halley, who fell for him because he was “Irish-looking”, “by which she meant a ­collection of indistinct features – pale skin, mousy hair, general air of ill-health – that combine to mysteriously powerful romantic ­effect.

In my mind, I kept thinking back to how I felt about the characters in some of Evelyn Waugh’s books. The protagonists in this one are also nauseating but the brilliance of the writing kept me reading.

Is 661 pages of a dark, boarding school comedy too much of a good laugh? I’m not sure.