 Book Reviews
with Robin Osborne
Vernon God Little
By DBC Pierre
Faber $29.95
 Australian author Peter Finlay, using the name DBC Pierre ('dirty but clean' is an in-joke with friends) was the shock winner of the Booker Prize for his explosive novel about an American teenager falsely accused of participating in the shooting of sixteen fellow students at his high school.
Even more surprising were the revelations about his life as a 'serial conniving bastard' who had used drugs, accumulated large gambling debts, been shot by an angry Mexico City neighbour and swindled an elderly American out of a house in Spain.
After the $150,000 Booker win, 'Pierre' promised to repay his debts, a quest that will be helped by the Booker-generated extra sales.
No book for the faint-hearted, this roller-coaster ride of the imagination takes the reader into the soulless world of Martirio, Texas, a place where nothing exciting happens until the day someone opens fire on a group of high-schoolers then puts the gun into his own mouth and, in theory at least, closes the case.
The killer, a Mexican-American named Jesus Navarro, is unmet until the book's closing chapters where it is revealed during Vernon Little's trial that his classmate was being sexually abused by several men and pictures posted on an internet porn site called 'Bambi-Boy'.
We might not empathise with Jesus, but at least there is an explanation for his extreme reaction, coming amidst a society fuelled by boredom, drug taking and access to firearms.
'It's as hot as hell in Martiro, but the papers on the porch are icy with the news,' begins Vern's first-person narration. 'Don't even try to guess who stood all Tuesday night in the road. Clue: snotty ole Mrs Lechuga.'
Soon the household has more than a nosy neighbour to contend with, as network news crews begin a stakeout and Vernon is accused of conspiracy by Deputy Sheriff Vaine Gurie, a weight-watcher with a weakness for refuelling at the town's cultural epicentre, Bar-B-Chew Barn.
Other standouts in the colourful cast are the ghastly TV reporter, Eulalio Ledesma, with whom Vern's mother has an affair, a paedophile shrink and the sexy Taylor Figueroa who follows Vern into Mexican exile, supposedly to help, actually to entrap him for the police.
Vern's murder trial is a set piece of black comedy, as is his jailing, near execution and eventual release, rounding off a coming-of-age tale that is equal parts Huckleberry Finn and South Park.
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