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Title: Vernon Little is a teenage version of Hunter S. Thompson
Review: Surprise Winner of the Man Booker Prize, this satire about a Columbine-like school shooting has moments of brilliance, and equal moments of tedium. Overall, the first-person narrative about a massacre in small-town Texas is swiftly moving, entertaining, and full of clever jabs at Hicksville, U.S.A., the media and the legal system. Told by Vernon Little, a 16-yr. old witness to the murders at his high school -- the gunman his best friend, Jesus -- the narration is written in a slap-dash, hip, disaffected voice that at turns feels like a teenage version of Hunter S. Thompson, but with a style unique to the author himself (in this first novel by Australian Peter Finlay, under the pen name DBC Pierre).The first 150 pages barrel along; the next 50 meander a bit; then the final 75 come flashing forth in a fevered run to expose all the secrets and tie up all the loose ends. A satisfying climax and, though definitely not for all tastes, a recommend.
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