VERNON Little is foul-mouthed, dirty-minded and contemptuous of the adult world.
A regular Texan teenager, in other words, but one who has the ill-fortune to have befriended another boy who goes on a Columbine-style rampage through his school. When the town casts around for someone to blame Vernon is the best available candidate.
If this sounds like an unlikely subject for knockabout comedy, it is, but Booker prize winner DBC Pierre almost pulls it off. Vernon's narration mingles surly cursing with a sharp-eyed satire of the grown-ups who surround him. His mother and her friends' helpless addiction to both fast food and diet plans; the town's simple-minded moralising; everyone's obsession with TV, and lust to be on it. All are shown up for what they are by his irreverent outsider's perspective.
Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre (Faber and Faber, £12.99)
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