Vernon God Little

by Dbc Pierre

Paperback, 2005

Status

Available

Call number

823.92

Tags

senior fiction, satire, America, literary fiction, humour, 5.1

Genres

Collection

Accelerated Reader

Publication

Faber & Faber (2005), Edition: Main, 288 pages

Description

Fiction. Literature. In the town jail of Martirio �? the barbecue sauce capital of Central Texas �? sits fifteen-year-old Vernon Little, dressed only in New Jack trainers and underpants. He is in trouble. His friend Jesus has just blown away sixteen of his classmates before turning the gun on himself. And Vernon, as his only buddy, has become the focus of the town�?s need for vengeance. The news of the tragedy has resulted in the quirky backwater being flooded with wannabe CNN hacks all-too-keen to claim their fifteen minutes and lay the blame for the killings at Vernon�?s feet. In particular Eulalio Ledesma, who begins manipulating matters so that Vernon becomes the centre for the bizarre and vengeful impulses of the townspeople of Martirio. But Vernon is sure he�?ll be ok. �?Why do movies end happy? Because they imitate life. You know it, I know it.�? Peopled by a cast of grotesques, freaks, coldblooded chattering housewives (who are all mysteriously, recently widowed), and one very special adolescent with an unfortunate talent for being in the wrong place at the right time, Vernon God Little is riotously funny and puts lust for vengeance, materialism, and trial by media squarely in the dock. It also heralds the arrival of one of the most exciting and acclaimed voices in contemporary fiction, who with this debut novel illustrates that in modern times innocence and basic humanity may… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member SqueakyChu
If you’re easily offended, this is definitely not the book for you. However, if you can cast aside foul language, toilet humor, and sexual innuendo to get to the heart of a story, you’ll thoroughly love this satire of life in Texas amid media moguls, law enforcement officers, and lady friends.
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 In the story, fifteen-year-old Vernon Gregory Little is thought to be an accomplice to the murder perpetrated by his friend Jesus upon sixteen of their high school classmates. In angst-filled, turbulent teen-speak, we listen to Vernon as he tries to proclaim his innocence. Later, when no one believes him, he plans his escape to Mexico.

This is not an easy book to read because of its language, but it is a fun one. If you just let the story flow, without taking it too seriously, you’re in for an entertaining ride. There is a motley cast of characters, many of whom you’re never sure if they’re good or evil. You’ll be seeing all of them through the eyes of Vernon who, despite his bravado, is one very scared youngster, realizing that he might be captured for a crime in which he had no part.
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24 more
LibraryThing member clogbottom
'Vernon God Little' is commonly denounced as an unrealistic portrayal of the tragedy of a school shooting, similar to the incident at Columbine High in Colorado some years ago. These type folks fail to realize that 'Vernon God Little' is only barely about a school shooting. It's about fancy
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 writin'. Check it:

"Deputy Gurie tears a strip of meat from a bone; it flaps through her lips like a shit taken backwards."

A shit taken backwards! Is that even possible? Who cares, it rules! Gems of this sort preponder in V.G. Little.

People seem to think that 'Vernon' was meant to be to the Columbine Massacre as 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' was to 9/11, or as the documentary 'Terminator 2' was to the coming robot rebellion. But it's not.

The school shooting is just an example of the larger malaise and absurdity DBC Pierre is pointing at with 'Vernon.' To even read the first sentence of the synopsis on the inside flap will show that Pierre is aiming a little higher than a recreation of the tragedy. The name of Vernon's Mexican friend who shot 16 kids and then himself is Jesus. Jesus killed a bunch of kids. Jesus is killing YOUR kids. And then killing himself. And Vernon 'God' Little is on the run from the cops.

This book has the very rare quality of being wildly funny and startlingly meaningful simultaneously. For this reason,a blurb on the back compares it to 'A Confederacy of Dunces,' and I agree. Although there is much more cursing and sex in 'Vernon,' which makes it automatically better.

Pierre also creates the most likable character I've read since, say, the protagonist in John Barth's 'The Floating Opera,' or what his face from 'The Sun Also Rises.' The sort of main character you can't help but want to see succeed. Or even William Stoner from 'Stoner' or Bjartur of Summerhouses from 'Independent People.' Characters who just can't catch a break, even though they probably deserve one.

Furthermore, all the narration is in Vernon's "fucken" dialect, which might get fucken old if it weren't so goddamn funny and Pierre was less tasteful and skillful with it. But he is, so it only serves to support the reader's warm feelings toward 'Vernon.'

The metaphor in 'Vernon' is trashily powerful. Can't find the page, but something like "The sky was like a bunch of lint balls on a soggy graham cracker." Mmm. Lint.

Suffice it to say, you should read this book, and you should should ignore the idea that it is meant to be a paean for the lives lost at Columbine High, because it's not. If you can divest yourself of that thought, you will at *least* have fun reading it, whether you agree with Pierre's assessment of American pop culture or not, because it is a masterful farce. Also:

"You don't know how bad I want to be Jean-Claude Van Damme. Ram her fucken gun up her ass, and run away with a panty model. But just look at me: clump of lawless brown hair, the eyelashes of a camel. Big ole puppy-dog features like God made me through a fucken magnifying glass. You know right away my movie's the one where I puke on my legs, and they send a nurse to interview me instead."
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LibraryThing member cmtusa
If Catcher in the Rye and Southpark had a child, Vernon God Little would be their frenetic, foul-mouthed, Red- Bull guzzling offspring. Laced with witty vernacular and a constant barrage of verbal gymnastics, this book delivers like very few books do. One of the best books I've ever read. Highly
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 recommended!
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LibraryThing member lauralkeet
Vernon Little is 15 when his friend Jesus opens fire on a group of classmates, killing 16 including himself. As one of the few survivors, Vernon becomes the town's scapegoat and is almost immediately charged as an accessory to the crime. This book, told from Vernon's point of view, describes the
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 nightmare of his life in the months following the shooting. Surprisingly, it does so with considerable humor and irony. Vernon lives with his mother; his father disappeared some time before. They have very little money and his mother clearly has emotional issues. Vernon steadfastly maintains his innocence relative to the shootings, but the townspeople are looking for a way to release their anger and grief. Unfortunately Vernon has no idea how to work the legal system, and his mother is pretty useless as well. He befriends a news reporter who appears to be on his side, but turns out to be a conniving jerk, using Vernon's story to his own advantage and fanning the flames of anger in the town. Vernon does several stupid things that increase the authorities' suspicions, and these desperate acts only serve to get him further tangled up in the case.

Vernon God Little is completely different from another in the "school shooting genre," We Need to Talk about Kevin, which was published about the same time. The latter is intense and emotional. Vernon God Little is filled with the wry wit and sexual obsessions of a 15-year-old boy. It's almost funny in parts. About two-thirds of the way through the book the storyline became a bit unbelievable, but the last 30 pages or so resolve things in a fairly satisfying way. Not a bad read.
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LibraryThing member hazzabamboo
No question about the quality of the writing (it's high: the modern American teenager's verbal awkwardness released through a lyrical written consciousness), perhaps more about whether this is for everyone.

It's filthy and shot through with bleakness. Then again, it's the filth and bleakness of the
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 modern world, nothing more or less. Pierre has nailed the internal grindings of an adolescent boy, and much of America too. I couldn't have enjoyed it as much as I did were it not for the lively sense of humour, and the redemption which is given room to breathe. Tellingly, it's the redemption Vernon envisages; he's a product of his world to the last.
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LibraryThing member sushidog
The back cover of the copy I read was blurb after blurb about how funny this book is (all from UK publications). I hadn't picked up the book looking for a comedy, I picked it up because the Booker list leads me to great reads. But there was a giant disconnect between the blurbs and the book. I just
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 didn't find the subject very funny. I was moved and frustrated by Vernon, but left cold by the leaps of logic that are usually acceptable in a comedy. Call me humourless.
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LibraryThing member akfarrar
This is a very painful read!

As with the best of satire, you are taken into a world of extremes where you KNOW that this couldn't really happen (or could it?)!

The characters who people this world are not like us - they are condensations of what we can do, of how we could think, of how we might act.
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 You need only look at the vigilante groups wandering various parts of the world, at the more extreme religious views held by certain groups of people and of the ruthless way the media have at times investigated personal tragedies to realise that this is not about any one place or any one time - it is about all of us and about what we could turn into if there were not people like the author of this work throwing books like this at our heads and hoping, like the fools of old, some of the message sticks.
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LibraryThing member LibraryLou
I loved this book. the characters were so well drawn, and the style so refreshing. I couldn't put it down. Some were put off by the swearing and refused to read it, but if you are writing about a teenage boy, and using his words, of course there will be swearing, he is hardly likely to go around
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 saying 'gosh, how absolutely ghastly'.
This book, while dealing with a serious and awful event at a High School in America, manages to portray with humour the scrapes a young man can get into if he is always believed to be a criminal. Some of the characters are hilarious, I found myself laughing out loud.
Definitely recommend this book.
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LibraryThing member iansales
You know those comic novels which are supposed to be funny but aren’t, and where the narrator’s voice is supposed to be funny but isn’t… well, this is one of them. There has been a tragedy in the Texas town of Martirio. Vernon’s best friend, Jesus, has gunned down several of his
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 schoolmates, and Vernon is still under suspicion as an accomplice. (He’s innocent, but no one particularly cares – Jesus is dead, and Vernon makes a good scapegoat). This is one of those novels where the entire cast are white trailer trash, and that’s sufficient to present them as comedy characters. Ignorance may be fertile soil for comedy, but there’s a right way to handle it and a wrong way. There’s a meanness to the characterisations in Vernon God Little which makes for unpleasant reading. It doesn’t help that Vernon is a thoroughly unlikeable narrator, nor in fact that none of the characters in the book are at all likeable – most, in fact, are closer to caricature than character. How this book won the Booker Prize is a mystery; how it was picked for the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list is an even bigger mystery. One to avoid.
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LibraryThing member JechtShot
Vernon Gregory Little, a 15-year-old boy from central Texas, who always seems to make inappropriate decisions or be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The book itself is a bit of a dark comedy as the main story arc revolves around Vernon's alleged participation in a violent school shooting where
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 16 classmates were killed. Hard to imagine this premise would spawn a humor book, but alas it does.

My biggest issue with this novel was my inability to relate to the main character. Parts of the novel were funny, parts confusing, but mostly I just didn't care. I was surprised to find that this was an award winning book, but what the heck do I know I am just one opinion in a sea of many.
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LibraryThing member catscritch
I enjoyed the Texas teen angst of this novel and at times, was laughing out loud. I came to understand and care about the characters very quickly which was a bit of a trick considering most of them are as fallable and floundering as the rest of mankind. Real, hard, desperate people dealing with a
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 terrible catalyst yet they all remained true to their nature. It may not be for everyone, but for those willing to crawl into this utterly warped and damaged 15 year old boy brain, I think you will be satisfied with the results.

And no... if you want Columbine, read Columbine.
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LibraryThing member actonbell
This novel, Vernon God Little, by DBC Pierre, is some of the wackiest, darkest comedy I've ever come across, not that I'm a humor expert, or anything. It satires life in a central Texan town, the media, and many types of human beings we all know. It's told in first person by Vernon Gregory Little,
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 with his ever so interesting vocabulary and twang, and the reader gets to see him grow up while wrestling with a personal nightmare.

When Vernon's best friend, a depressed outcast in school, randomly shoots sixteen of his classmates and then turns the gun on himself, Vernon is left in the wrong place at the wrong time and is accused as being an accessory to these murders. There really is no case against Vernon, or so you'd think, in a town where people are reasonable and reasonably bright, but unfortunately, this town is filled with people who are just plain ole stupid. This is a cliffhanger of a story that you'll want to keep reading, and there's lots of laughter, too.

An original!
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LibraryThing member lenoreva
Vernon's best friend shoots up a school and Vernon becomes a scapegoat and the chance of a lifetime for a greasy, slimeball loser named Lally. Local color is a tad distracting, but you gotta love a book that has this line: "Ella's (hair) always blown to hell, like a Barbie doll your dog's been
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 chewing on for a month."
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LibraryThing member JakyBF
As a sixteen year old boy, I thought this was a great laugh-out-loud book, and a great way of combining British humour within an unmistakably American setting. Very much a modern 'catcher in the rye' type book, not supprised that it won such a prestigious award.
LibraryThing member Quixada
This book really surprised me. I don't usually read current authors because so much crap is published today. And I hardly ever read a book that is advertised as "comic". But I was taking a mental break from reading Derrida and wanted something less challenging for a change. This book is very
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 creative. Many people will hate it. Many people will not comprehend the author. Many very talented authors (and other artists) are often misunderstood. I was very impressed with this book and the author's imagination. Don't get me wrong, this is no "The Brothers Karamazov", but it is good compared to other 21st century writing so far.
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LibraryThing member miketroll
The tag of Booker Prize winner is no guarantee of a satisfying read, but the last two (Life of Pi and now Vernon God Little) make one look forward to the next.

VGL is a street-wise teenager growing up in a small town in Central Texas. In the hysteria that follows a mass shooting at his high school,
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 he becomes the main suspect in the murder investigation. The real culprit, his friend Jesus, was his own final victim and no longer satisfied the craving for retribution.

This is a crackling, pacy short novel – almost a long short story in the American style. It is funny, acerbic, sometimes satirical, and profound.

The vitality of the book stems from the strength of its wise-cracking hero. VGL the street kid, views the world with the steady, dispassionate gaze of a perceptive adult, In spite of his mounting troubles, he betrays no flicker of self-pity. Towards those who wrong him (practically everyone!), he shows not malice but understanding. Almost Christ-like virtues (and there is plenty of such imagery and allusion), with the difference that VGL is free from messianic delusions of grandeur.

A terrific central character in a terrific book.
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LibraryThing member stillbeing
Damn funny and irreverent. Though sometimes I found myself becoming frustrated at just how much goes wrong for poor Vernon Little, the ending really made it worth it. It's about time something this cutting and amusing came from an Australian author.

National tragedies. Media beat ups. Excrement.

And
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 it's better than it sounds.
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LibraryThing member achelate
Such an astonishing book!! Enjoyed so much the humour and sadness in it.
LibraryThing member krista
I'm going to keep this short. One of the worst books I ever read. Too many swear words. Infantile language. I couldn't relate.
LibraryThing member verenka
I read this book from front to cover but I'm not sure I understood all of it. Especially towards the end it gets all a bit confusing. I didn't particularly care for the style. it is an odd combination of texan adolescent vernacular and strangely poetic lines that seem out of place. I kept reading
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 because I wondered what actually happened that day. I can't say I'm sure now, I'll have to ask someone with more insight to confirm my suspicion.
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LibraryThing member samfsmith
A very strange book. It’s not the plot that’s strange, although it is somewhat surreal at times, not the characters, or the setting. It’s the narrator, who is crude and scatologically obsessed. It’s like watching an episode of South Park or Family Guy, but without a lot of the humor.
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 Although there is some wry, satirical humor.

Vernon Little is the narrator, a teenager from Texas caught in the tragedy of a school shooting. He is blamed for it, or at least targeted as the scapegoat, and then all manner of unlikely events occur.

So if you can get past the constant images of shit and crap and the aroma of poontang, you might actually enjoy this book.
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LibraryThing member xmaystarx
I want to give this such a better review and rating but I don't even remember reading it! Book journal says I did, put it on the re-read list.
LibraryThing member rachellek
I love to read books that have won the Man Booker Prize. The organizers of this prize do a wonderful job of selecting rich full books that never fail to haunt me. Vernon God Little is no exception. What a wonderful hero this story has. DBC Pierre does such an amazing job of creating a teenage
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 character and allows you to be in his head the entire story. One warning - this book isn't for the weak at heart!
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LibraryThing member wendyrey
I retired defeated about half way through, too much male adolescent angst for me . I also got irritated at the constant flow of swear words, someone should count the number of ' the f word' used and give the average per page. I found very odd that the use of the word 'underpants' was considered a
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 euphemism for ' panties' and that the twee ' panties' was considered ruder than the 'f word'. The irony was so heavy handed that it actually lost its point.
Not my thing at all.
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LibraryThing member kambrogi
This coming-of-age story features Vernon Little, a fifteen year old small-town Texan who is implicated in murder and seems unable to defend himself against a misguided community. It is mostly a biting satire based on all the most common stereotypes about Americans, their life and culture (perhaps
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 the aspect that made it so attractive to the Booker committee). Its greatest strength is young Vernon’s marvelously human and individual voice, and its spot-on humor. Its weakness is perhaps the same – his offensive language, his adolescent views, the scatological and sexual excesses of his commentary. Many had the same response to The Catcher in the Rye at its debut, although its more serious approach appealed more to me.

This story is entirely implausible, but as a work of social satire, that is beside the point. Readers will perhaps find it instructive as a cautionary tale, humorous in its approach to Americans’ worst excesses, and delightful in its flawed but sympathetic protagonist. Although it is a 2003 work, it is especially timely right now, in that it takes special note of growing intolerance toward Hispanic citizens and their families.
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Subjects

Awards

Language

English

Original language

English

Original publication date

2003

Physical description

288 p.; 4.92 inches

ISBN

0571215165 / 9780571215164

Barcode

3156

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