Vernon God Little » (Reprint)

An unknown author with a bad-boy background, including a penchant for drugs and gambling, DBC Pierre hit upon a lucky streak -- and a new life -- with his debut novel, Vernon God Little, winning Britain's coveted Man Booker Prize for literature in 2003.

"If Huckleberry Finn were set on the Mexican-American border and written by the creators of South Park, it might read something like this."-San Francisco Chronicle

When sixteen kids are shot on high school grounds, everyone looks for someone to blame. Meet Vernon Little, under arrest at the sheriff's office, a teenager wearing nothing but yesterday's underwear and his prized logo sneakers. Moments after the shooter, his best buddy, turns the gun on himself, Vernon is pinned as an accomplice. Out for revenge are the townspeople, the cable news networks, and Deputy Vaine Gurie, a woman whose zeal for the Pritikin diet is eclipsed only by her appetite for barbecued ribs from the Bar-B-Chew Barn. So Vernon does what any red-blooded American teenager would do; he takes off for Mexico.
Vernon God Little is a provocatively satirical, riotously funny look at violence, materialism, and the American media.

Winner of the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel A New York Times Notable Book A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year

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.

The New York Times

… Pierre renders adolescence brilliantly, capturing with seeming effortlessness the bright, contradictory hormone rush of teenage life. Here's Vernon on what it's like to approach a girl he's supposed to meet at a mall: ''I slouch low, hoping she doesn't see me yet. I hate it when you go to meet somebody, and they spot you.'' They stare at you, he continues, though it's not true -- the girl is just looking at him kindly. ''You feel like your steps bounce too much, or your shoulders are too dangly or something. You hold the same dumb smile.'' Holden Caulfield would have liked Vernon Little, especially if he'd had access to a stash of Ritalin. — Sam Sifton