Awards
2003 Man Booker Prize Winner
2003 Whitbread Award for Best First Novel
Synopses & Reviews
In the town jail of Martirio, Texas under the terrifying care of the dynastic Gurie family, and wearing only his New Jack trainers and underpants fifteen-year-old Vernon Little is in trouble. His friend has just blown away sixteen of his classmates before turning the gun on himself. And Vernon has become the focus of the whole town's need for vengeance, and the media's appetite for sensational content true or not. When the tricky Mr. Lesdema arrives in town with a covert mission to promote himself from TV repairman to crack CNN reporter Vernon thinks he has an ally. In fact, Lesdema is a villain of Machiavellian proportions. Vernon soon realizes that in this modern world innocence is definitely no defense. One distasteful arrangement with old Mr. Deutschman and $300 later, Vernon is headed for the border, for freedom and Mexico, and a much-anticipated date with the nigh-mythical Taylor Figueroa. But Texas isn't finished with Vernon yet.
Vital, riotously funny, and energetic, Vernon God Little puts lust for vengeance, materialism, and trial by media squarely in the dock. Vernon himself emerges as the lovable upholder of love, truth, and homespun wisdom in a world gone mad.
Review
"[T]he real triumph lies in Pierre's creation of Vernon, a mouthpiece for today's disaffected teenagers....[I]n his credible articulation of Vernon's existential angst Pierre has created an invigorating heir to Holden Caulfield." Lucy Beresford, Literary Review
Review
"[S]cabrously funny....[I]n Vernon Little, Pierre has channeled the most afflicted and endearing hero since Rushmore's Max Fischer. (Grade: A)" Noah Robischon, Entertainment Weekly
Review
"[S]tartling and excellent....Like the best satires, it makes you feel faintly guilty for laughing, which intensifies the pleasure of reading. It also keeps you hooked....Vernon himself is a brilliant comic creation..." Carrie O'Grady, The Guardian (UK)
Review
"Vernon God Little shows some promise, but it is not a good book. More important even than that, it's not a plausible book....However well Pierre's work might reflect the 'alarm and fascination' of Corey and his colleagues, what it doesn't reflect with any authority is America itself. It's a synthetic concoction of artificial flavors and colors, about as authentic a representation of American life as cherry soda is of the fresh fruit....Vernon God Little doesn't sound American, it doesn't sound Texan, and it doesn't sound teenage....Vernon God Little isn't really about school shootings in any meaningful way. The massacre is affixed to the book like a sticker vouching for its import, the thing that purportedly transforms it from a minor Salingeresque coming-of-age story into a 'coruscating black comedy reflecting our alarm and fascination with modern America'....Nevertheless, the French are lapping it up and so, now, are the British. Simply including a school shooting in your book or movie, apparently, is enough to mark it as a thoughtful commentary on American society, whether or not you've actually bothered to think about it." Laura Miller, Salon.com
About the Author
DBC Pierre is the pen name of Peter Finlay, who was born in Australia in 1961 and divided most of the first twenty-three years of his life between Texas and Mexico City. He lives in Ireland.