Vernon God Little

I was browsing through the selection of books at the Quality Paperback Book Club  a couple of months ago, and the title, Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre caught my eye.  According to the reviews, it was definitely a “love it or hate it” book, and the fact that it promised to be “darkly comedic” was enough to make me buy a copy.  I notice it’s no longer for sale at QPB and perhaps that should have been an omen, but regardless, I pulled it off the shelf and started to read it a few days ago.

The book ending up being a “hate it, love it, hate it” book for me (hey, I sound like Randy Jackson—it was just “aw-right” for me, dawg).  The first couple of chapters were confusing and difficult to read, as it’s written in an odd, small-town vernacular.  Many words are mispronounced by Vernon, the narrator, and are written-out as interpreted by him, so “scapegoat” becomes “skate goat”, for example, and while it’s sort of “cute” at first, it’s annoying after a while.  There are at least one or two words that I just never figured out at all, proving that not everyone enjoys a malapropism.  After I got used to the rhythm of the book I started to enjoy it, and read everything up until the last chapter with enthusiasm.  It’s a good story and it moves quickly, but the plot can be confusing at times, and I definitely think I was helped because I already knew the book was about the aftermath of a high school shooting (a la Columbine).  I was annoyed by the surplus of pedophiles in the story, and never really understood the motives of Eulalio, the “bad guy”.  Mostly though, my irritation at the ending of the book erased any enjoyment I got from the rest of it.  The story goes from being at least plausible to being something akin to science fiction as Vernon ends up on death row, where his fate is decided by viewers of a reality TV show (the viewers get to choose who dies every week).  Vernon ultimately decides to go to his death rather than divulge evidence which would exonerate him.

Some reviewers at Amazon.com complained about the bad language in the book, and the fact that none of the characters were “likeable”.  I didn’t care about any of that stuff, I just hated that the storyline was fuzzy and that the book ended in a really stupid way.  Vernon God Little was winner of the 2003 Man Booker prize, and Life of Pi was the winner in 2002, so I’d say that the chances of me reading the 2004 winning title, The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst are just about nil.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 03/16 at 10:18 PM

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