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There is no mystery regarding the fate of the main character in Paul Murray’s second novel, Skippy Dies. Skippy (Daniel Juster to his parents), is a 14 year-old dreamer, MMRPG addict and boarder at Seabrook College for Boys, a private Catholic boarding school in Dublin. Inside the first 5 pages of the book, Skippy, er, dies.

Having first described (in lurid, technicolor detail) the death scene of the young teenager, the rest of Skippy Dies is structured around the back-story and consequences of Skippy’s spectacular demise.

For a 600+ page post-modern comic novel, which leaps between multiple narrators and encompasses multiverse theory, early 20th century esotericism, video games, the Decline of the Catholic Church in Ireland, teenage love, the 2008 financial crisis and the poetry of Robert Graves, Skippy Dies hangs together remarkably well.

I found it, by moments, deeply funny, and despite the disjointed narrative, you grow to deeply care for the characters.

Ruprecht van Doren, for example, is a true 21st Century original: Skippy’s obese room-mate and Seabrook’s resident genius, he spends his days munching through doughnuts, building devices in the school basement for multi-dimensional travel and dreaming of the day when he will be taken up unto Stanford to work alongside the World-Famous Physicist Hideo Tamashi.

Father Green, the school’s French teacher, is in search of some kind of redemption for past sins – despite his formidable classroom reputation – while Howard, (the principal adult voice in the novel), is a failed stockbroker who tries to teach history to uninterested adolescents while struggling with his own twentysomething mid-life crisis.

Paul Murray deserves particular respect for finding authentic voices for his teenage characters. He manages to illustrate their worldview – distracted, hormonal and video-and-internet-infused – without ever slipping up. The dialogue is never overwritten. His teenagers are by turns cruel, confused and cocksure, and never sound fake.

Likewise, the occasional transition into second-person narrative – a risky device at the best of times – feels natural and unforced, and works well to expresses that certain self-centredness that is perhaps a necessary part of adolescence.

Skippy Dies is Irish, ironic, immensely good fun, and contains the Best High School Halloween Disco Scene in the History of Literature. A novel on this scale could have easily choked on its own pink frosting, but this book works well. Really, really well.

Highly recommended are Edward Champion’s two podcast interviews with Paul Murray on the Bat Segundo Show:

Paul Murray Part I

Paul Murray Part II

Spending some time recently cleaning out my hard drive, I rediscovered a short story I wrote a few years ago. It’s entitled How We Destroyed Panama, and anyone who is interested can pick it up in PDF format here (5,800 words, 11 pages).

Reading over it again with a few year’s hindsight, there’s very little story, and what story there is, has very little to do with Panama. The writing is uneven, but I figure as I’m giving away the story for free, nobody really can complain too much.

(The usual disclaimers apply regarding coincidental resemblance to real people and events.)

France 3′s continuing little World War Two epic Un Village Français has just reached the end of its third season, with double episodes playing on Sunday nights over the festive break. This ongoing TV series, planned to run over 5 years, is an attempt to tell the story of everyday life in Vichy France. I for one, am rather enjoying it.

The series takes place in Villeneuve, a fictional town in Vichy-controlled territory in the Jura. The town, which is a subprefecture and certain larger than the “village” indicated in the title, is populated by a vast ensemble cast of men, women and children who are coping with war, occupation and a new totalitarian government as best they can.

The writers seem to emphasise verisimilitude and human interest, rather than strict historical accuracy: the active viewer forum on the France 3  website is stuffed with trainspotters pointing out errors in chronology, military equipment or administrative arcana. However,  if sometimes the scenarios spiral towards melodrama, the performances are solid.

Robin Renucci (right) plays Dr Daniel Larcher

Robin Renucci is magnificent as Dr Larcher, the town’s doctor and mayor, balancing his family and medical practice with demands of local politics under the Vichy regime. The belgian actor Patrick Descamps, noted in France for his other appearances as a TV detective, plays the increasingly disillusioned and alcoholic Inspector De Kervern, who must hold down a desk job in the town’s police station, while harbouring a Jewish woman in his apartment.

Occasionally the series seems rather didactic – for instance, one episode entitled Par amour concentrated largely on the intimate relationships developing between French women and the German troops stationed in the town.

In addition, each episode ends with a 5 minute historical “featurette” including interviews with French people who lived through the Vichy era, reflecting on their own experiences during wartime: here the show seems to take some inspiration from Spielberg-produced historical dramas such as HBO’s Band of Brothers.

Marie Kremer as Lucienne Borderie, Villeneuve’s primary school teacher

All things considered, Un village français is a worthy, well-made drama that makes up for its lack of Hollywood budget with its ambition: to recount the subtleties of an entire chapter in French history, told from the perspectives of the citizens of one provincial town. It’s certainly one of the best things on French TV.

After three seasons, the ensemble of characters is well-established, and the intrigues can only grow more complex as the war progresses.  By the end of Season Three, we have only reached October 1941. There are still 3 years of occupation to go.   I hope that funding for the show continues, so we can live with Villeneuve through to liberation.

Gustave Larcher: (Maxim Driesen, centre) nephew of the mayor and son of a communist terrorist