Published 2003 / Length 277 pages
The tour de force that is Vernon God Little was indisputably the darkest black comedy to hit the bookshops in 2003. In Martirio, Texas, fifteen-year-old Vernon is wrongly accused of being one of the shooters in a massacre at his local high school. From this moment on, his life (which wasn’t perfect in the first place) takes a decidedly catastrophic turn for the worse. Satirizing all of America’s nastiest tics, from reality TV and fast-food outlets to the disturbingly deathly justice system, Vernon’s story is peopled by some of the funniest, most grotesque, panty-sniffing over-eaters this side of hell. A coming-of-age novel, a political novel, an on-the-road novel, D. B. C. Pierre’s book not only defies genres, but also grabs you by the throat from its opening sentence, with language that kicks, gobs and spits off the page, enthralling and appalling to the very last word.
‘Read Vernon God Little not only for its dangerous relevance, but for the coruscating wit and raw vitality of its voice, which recalls maybe Flannery O’Connor on an overdose of amphetamines and cable television.’ – The List
• Vernon Gregory Little’s authorial voice is not only full of linguistic energy, but it is also highly inventive and at times extremely idiomatic. Does this prejudice the clarity of the story?
• By any stretch of the imagination Vernon Gregory Little isn’t a run-of-the-mill central character, but does his irreverence undermine his position as the book’s hero?
• The subtitle of the novel is ‘A Twenty-First-Century Comedy in the Presence of Death’. What does the story tell us about America at the start of the new century? Is the author’s criticism of the USA justified?
• How did the ending of the book strike you? Critics have said that it could be read in two different ways. Do you agree?
• The author was born Peter Warren Finlay in Australia. The ‘D. B. C’ part of Pierre’s name supposedly stands for ‘Dirty But Clean’.
• In 2003, Vernon God Little won the Booker Prize, the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Award for Comic Writer and the Whitbread Best First Novel Award.
• The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. SALINGER (see here) – this classic set the benchmark for coming-of-age novels.
• Trainspotting by IRVINE WELSH – does the language in which Welsh tells his story aid or alienate the reader?
• Morvern Callar by ALAN WARNER – with an amoral, distinctly bizarre heroine at the heart of this book, how does Morvern’s story compare with Vernon’s?
• Sheepshagger by NIALL GRIFFITHS – as irreverent as it is unsentimental, this novel is wired into the Welsh countryside as much as Vernon’s story is wired into the badlands of Texas. How do the very different geographical settings affect the books’ characters?