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{{infobox infobox1
|title= Skippy Dies
|author= Paul Murray
|buy= Maybe
|borrow= Yes
|pages=672
|publisher= Hamish Hamilton
|date= February 2010
|isbn=978-0241141823
|amazonukcover=<amazonuk>0241141826</amazonuk> |amazonusaznuk=0241141826|aznus=<amazonus>0241141826</amazonus>
}}
{{toptentext|list=Man Booker Prize 2010}}
{{amazontext|amazon=0241141826}} {{waterstonestextamazonUStext|waterstonesamazon=60834320241141826}}
{{commenthead}}
[[Category:General Fiction]]
{{comment
|name=David L
|verb= said
|comment= Comment on review.
Two thirds the way through his review Mr Lloyd expresses the following reservation:
"Also, in none of the three parts was Dublin existent as a character. We only get a couple of lines of dialogue in anything like Oirish phonetic speech, and I think this would have been more enlivened by highlighting its Irish origins and character."
Sorry to inform you Mr Lloyd that we Dubliners don't speak phonetic Oirish and never did in the first place. There is a traditional working class inner city accent, that has always been miles apart from the traditional regional mostly rural accents that Hollywood and the Brits associate with the whole country. This accent is analogous to Cockney and it has spread to the working class suburbs in a process similar to the spread of Estuarine. Middle class suburban Dubliners speak with a neutral accent analogous to RP, but without the strained vowels and stiff upper lip, much influenced especially amongst the young by US TV shows in slang and pronunciation, and oddly closest to the accent of Toronto.
What is most depressing about the above remark is the implication that we Irish are expected to churn out some species of "heritage" Oirishry at least 50 years out of date for the delectation of metropolitans in London or New York who still haven't gotten over their JM Synge. I grew up and went to school at a similar institution within a two mile radius of "Seabrook College" and even though I'm twenty years older than the author I can assure you that this is a wholly authentic portrait of Dublin's middle class suburbs, which has been a long time coming. Middle class suburban Dublin which holds almost one quarter of the population of this country has been poorly represented in Irish literature. "Skippy Dies" is a belated novel in the sense that something like it could have been produced at any time since the early 1980s but those engaged in literature preferred to stick with the traditional terrain of rural Ireland (Friel, Heaney, McGahern) or working class Dublin (Roddy Doyle, Jim Sheridan) or of course the Troubles and Belfast which soaked up a lot of artistic attention.
South Dublin middle class suburbia was ignored, but it was the social avant-garde of Ireland: it was the most affluent, the most connected to the outside world, it had access to British TV before anyone else, was the first to travel frequently outside Ireland, it was the first place where kids had too much money, where kids started using drugs, where kids could steal their mother's valium, where families started to break down, where pornography was available- smuggled in on various school trips abroad, where anomie developed- and here I'm referring to my memories of the 1970s. But the arty crowd either ignored or were ignorant of all this. To them South Dublin was vulgar, boring, materialistic, snobbish and philistine. They should have paid attention cos everything that happened in the whole country during the Celtic Tiger was prefigured here 20 years earlier.
Skippy Dies is a great book and an authentic portrait of a later generation than my own in which I recognize many of the features of my own South Dublin days of the 70s and 80s. If Mr Lloyd is visiting Dublin soon and wants to experience some Oirishry I can point him in the direction of several fake Irish bars in which he can join the rest of the tourists in search of something long since departed.
David L
}}
