Vernon God Little (Paperback)

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.

Sadly, it is painfully obvious that the novelist substituted watching imported US television for actual research. Instead of the Booker, the novel should win the Nebula, for bears as much resemblance to reality as does I, Robot. DBC Pierre - or rather, Peter Finley - can't even get the rhythm of the speech right, making supposedly redneck Vernon sound like a refugee from Manchester, UK.

For a satire to work, it must be grounded in the subject which it satirizes. Vernon God Little misses by a mile. And since the book is not strenuous to read - as long as you're familiar with four-letter Anglo-Saxon expletives, you'll get through the prose no time - it is the perfect comfort food for those who like to jump on media bandwagons in the hopes of puffing up their own pseudo-intellectual consequence, but who might find, oh say, Oryx and Crake or Middlesex a little daunting.

Above all, Vernon God Little is America for those living on distant shores so they can stop feeling vaguely anxious because their ancestors forgot to emigrate, or worse, emigrated to the wrong New World. Even sadder, for they should know better, the book confirms the worst stereotypes of "flyover country" for those smugly superior in the Greater Tri-State area or West Coast, for whom Texas is as exotic and unknown as Uganda.

There are far better recent books about teenage alienation, oblivious parents and feeble-minded authority figures - some even written by real American teenagers. Please Don't Kill the Freshman by Zoe Trope or Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chlobsky are novels that would not (and should not) receive literary prizes, but at least know their subject matter. And there are far better satires of American mores and manners out there. I've read Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut, Heller and Vonnegut are favorite authors of mine, and you, Mr. Finley, are no Heller or Vonnegut. As for shedding light on US school shootings, Michael Moore's documentary Bowling for Columbine provokes far more thought and reflection - and black humor - on the subject.

What's so amazing about the hoopla surrounding the book is that Finley is an admitted con artist/supposedly clean former junkie of the worst sort; the type who thought nothing of swindling his elderly American benefactor out of his home in Spain, leaving the man homeless and depressed. Congratulations to Finley for once more pulling off a terrific con, brillantly hoodwinking the British media (thankfully, the New York Times, among others, has seen through the smoke and mirrors on the other side of the Atlantic.)

But then, those who proclaim the Booker Emperor has New Clothes really only have themselves to blame.