Vernon God Little: A 21st Century Comedy in the Presence of Death (Man Booker Prize) (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "It's hot as hell in Martirio, but the papers on the porch are icy with the news..." (more)
Key Phrases: wishing bench, fucken ass, fucken life, Vaine Gurie, Bar-B-Chew Barn, Taylor Figueroa (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The surprise winner of the 2003 Man Booker Prize, DBC Pierre's debut novel, Vernon God Little, makes few apologies in its darkly comedic portrait of Martirio, Texas, a town reeling in the aftermath of a horrific school shooting. Fifteen-year-old Vernon Little narrates the first-person story with a cynical twang and a four-letter barb for each of his diet-obsessed townsfolk. His mother, endlessly awaiting the delivery of a new refrigerator, seems to exist only to twist an emotional knife in his back; her friend, Palmyra, structures her life around the next meal at the Bar-B-Chew Barn; officer Vaine Gurie has Vernon convicted of the crime before she's begun the investigation; reporter Eulalio Ledesma hovers between a comforting father-figure and a sadistic Bond villain; and Jesus, his best friend in the world, is dead--a victim of the killings. As his life explodes before him, Vernon flees his home in pursuit of a tropical fantasy: a cabin on a beach in Mexico he once saw in the movie Against All Odds. But the police--and TV crews--are in hot pursuit.

Vernon God Little is a daring novel and demands a patient reader, not because it is challenging to read--Pierre's prose flows effortlessly, only occasionally slipping from the unmistakable voice of his hero--but because the book skates so precariously between the almost taboo subject of school violence and the literary gamesmanship of postmodern fiction. Yet, as the novel unfolds, Pierre's parodic version of American culture never crosses the line into caricature, even when it climaxes in a death-row reality TV show. And Vernon, whose cynicism and smart-ass "learnings" give way to a poignant curiosity about the meaning of life, becomes a fully human, profoundly sympathetic character. --Patrick O'Kelley

From Publishers Weekly

Pierre takes a freewheeling, irreverent look at teenage Sturm und Drang in his erratic, sometimes darkly comic debut novel about a Texas boy running from the law in the wake of a gory school shooting. Vernon Gregory Little is the 15-year-old protagonist, a nasty, sarcastic teenager accused of being an accessory to the murders committed by his friend Jesus Navarro in tiny Martirio, "the barbecue sauce capital of Texas." Vernon manages to make bail and avoid the media horde that descends on the town after the killings, but he's unable to get to the other gun-his father's-which he knows will tie him to the crime, despite his innocence. His flight path takes him first to Houston, where he unsuccessfully tries to hook up with gorgeous former schoolmate Taylor Figueroa; the crafty beauty, promised a media job by the evil Lally, who's also duped Vernon's mom, follows him to Mexico and efficiently betrays him. Most of the plotting feels like an excuse for Vernon's endless, sharply snide riffs on his small town and the unique excesses of America that helped spawn the killings. Unfortunately, Vernon's voice grows tiresome, his excesses make him rather unlikable and the over-the-top, gross-out humor is hit-or-miss. Pierre's wild energy offers entertaining satire as well as cringe-provoking scenes, and though he can write with incisive wit, this is a bumpy ride.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 279 pages
• Publisher: Canongate Books; 4th edition (October 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1841954608
• ISBN-13: 978-1841954608
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (138 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #113,287 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars All Voice, November 17, 2003

By	Debbie Lee Wesselmann (the Lehigh Valley, PA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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The strength of DBC Pierre's award-winning novel is in the voice of its narrator, Vernon Gregory Little, a fifteen year old oddball kid from Texas whose best friend Jesus went on a shooting rampage at school. Because Jesus killed himself at the scene, there's no one to take legal and emotional blame for the tragedy, so the police haul Vernon into the station for questioning. Through a series of mistakes and an adolescent distrust of authority, Vernon looks more and more guilty despite not being at the scene until after the massacre. Dogged by a slimy television repairman turned reporter, ignored by a mother who wants a new refrigerator more than a freed son, and supported by his mother's best friend whose answer to every tragedy is a trip to the Bar-B-Chew Barn, Vernon is left to his own, not-so-sophisticated devices.

This novel is funny in a grating way: the humor has a forced edge to it that sometimes works but often doesn't. Malapropisms abound and quickly get tiring, mostly because the narrator is not as ignorant as the garbled phrases suggest. The language is profane and sometimes clumsy, and Vernon's hormonally-charged psyche comes out in weak, meaningless descriptions, such as piano notes "tinkling in the background, soft as ovaries hitting oatmeal." With often biting satire, Pierre turns his eye to many facets of American society: the media, the judicial system, obsession with food, small town life, religion, psychiatry, families, adolescent angst. The scenes are over the top, which is perfect for satire, but Pierre never tackles the issues with any depth or fresh insight. Instead, this novel reads as a dark comic strip punctuated by profanity. It is ultimately more ambitious than it is successful. Even its thematic development of religious imagery is clumsy. Pierre uses Vernon's friend's name Jesus frequently in a context that could confuse him with the Christian Messiah, and Vernon often talks about being nailed to a cross; these references fall heavily and without real meaning. (I find it intriguing that both last year's Man Booker Prize (The Life of Pi) and this 2003 winner rely on religious imagery to convey the plight of a naif.)

VERNON GOD LITTLE is a memorable book, told with a voice that is as distinctive as the best first-person narrators in fiction; however, a voice alone does not make a fine novel. I recommend this uneven book only for those who want to keep up on the latest prize-winners in fiction, and perhaps for those who liked A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, a novel to which this is often compared.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars No thanks!, February 21, 2005

By	S. Cornforth "Steve Cornforth" (Liverpool, UK England) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Vernon God Little (Paperback)

Am I only only person who hated this novel with a passion? It was the worst piece of pretentious drivel that I have read since....? The novel is narrated by VGL who is a 15 year old who becomes a scapegoat for a school massacre carried out by his friend who killed himself at the scene.

Other reviewers have criticised the bad language. In fact that was one of the few things that didn't irritate me. You would expect this from the mouth of a rebellious teenager. The main problem was that I didn't seem to be listening to a young narrator but to the novelist being smart. At one point he observes an old man whose skin 'hangs down in his pockets...erosion caused from waves of diappointment' Oh please!

Apart from the writing the characters simply got on my nerves. I was struggling to find one likeable person. By the end I did not really care what happened to Vernon so long as it was over quickly.

I am in a minority. Others love this book - not least the 2003 Booker Judges! But we can't like everything.

44 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Elements of Past Faves, October 31, 2003

By A Customer

This reminds me a lot of three books: MY FRACTURED LIFE (Rikki Lee Travolta), CATCHER IN THE RYE (JD Salinger), and THE OUTSIDERS (SE Hinton). If you enjoy these books I recommend you may like this one too. I found it to be excellent.