Rating: 
Summary: The Wrong Sell
Review: Anyone who sees Vernon God Little as similar to Catcher In The Rye needs to read both books again.
Some of the humor is more slapstick than wit, it's true - like Vernon's references to what his acting heroes would do in similar situations to the ones he finds himself in. If you enjoy that type of humor, you'll like this book. I never saw the writing as highly stylized which is another critism. Perhaps it would trouble some readers to learn that there are and have been young people who genuinely think similarly to how Vernon does -without much style at all - using the f word habitually, and finding sex everywhere.
It's a good book, funny at times, and entertaining. I find the routine criticisms to be way off the mark.
Don't be deterred.
Rating: 
Summary: Vernon God Little
Review: Vernon God Little won the Booker Prize for 2003 which is pretty much the only reason why I bought the book. It is about a serial killer - or more accurately, someone who is implicated in school shootings - and the effects this has on the town. Doesn't sound too appealing to me, and the little bit I know about the author didn't help either.The story starts the day after the school killings, the actual killer committed suicide and his only friend, Vernon Little, is accused of being an accomplice. For some weird reason, nobody in the town really seems to be affected by the killings (sixteen in total, I think). From what I remember there is only ONE mention of a grieving parent, and none of the kids seems to hate Vernon, his mother doesn't receive threatening letters, nothing. Not even her friends treat him different, which to me seems a little incorrect. Time passes and the town doesn't change. Nobody seems to care except everyone wants Vernon. Nobody cares about the actual killer, just Vernon. A few subplots are picked up, then dropped. Finally *SPOILERS* Vernon goes to Mexico to get away from it all and in the WORST plot twist ever, is captured and put on death row. A fifteen year old. Then, *BIG SPOILERS* he is pardoned at the very end in the stupidest, most implausible chain of events ever. In fact, I'm not even sure how these events resulted in him being pardoned. And naturally the *MORE SPOILERS* ungainly girl that loves him at the start becomes amazingly beautiful at the end. Pathetic. So yes, I wasn't too impressed with this book. There was a lot of swearing, which I guess is fun, but it seemed more for shock value than anything else. The writing was ok, the plot was horrible and the wrap-up left me feeling so cheated that I sat around for the rest of the weekend doing nothing. Disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: Victim of success
Review: Vernon God Little
D.B.C. Pierre Pierre tries to satirize America's penchant for junk food and junk television, while at the same time attempting to understand the culture that leads to Columbine. The satire is often painfully on the mark, but the massacre analysis and Job-like trials of hero Vernon G. Little both fall a little flat. When Pierre succeeds with his his satire, as he does with the Vernon's extended "family," he puts flesh onto familiar caricatures. And when he lets his Salinger mimicry lapse, he captures perfectly the state of mind of a teenager, the garbled logic that makes a fantasy seem a rational choice. Often, though, the novel feels like a pastiche of cliches, a collage of imagery torn from checkout aisle magazines. As a first novel, Vernon God Little is both fun and promising. As a Booker Prize winner, it begins to crumble under the weight of expectations. And compared to true classics such as Catcher in the Rye and A Confederacy of Dunces, as many critics insist on doing, it collapses. Which is sad. Left on its own Vernon God Little would build a small audience, and probably become a cult favorite. As it is, the prize and attendant hype are drawing levels of both praise and scorn that it doesn't really deserve.
Rating:
Summary: Was it supposed to be funny?? A comic tragedy
Review: All the reviews on the jacket cover of this book stated it was "uproarious", or "the most hilarious novel of the year". I think I am missing something. True, the sharp-tongued, foul-mouthed, Holden Caulfield wannabe narrator, Vernon, certainly has his moments of quick wit and dry humor that made me laugh outloud. But funny lines do not a funny novel make. This is precisely the case with this book. Indeed, it's hard to write a funny book that circles around a school shooting and the pursuit of an innocent young man who has been elected scapegoat. Vernon Little didn't do anything wrong. His friend, Jesus, did, killing 16 of his classmates before turning the gun on himself. Since Jesus isn't around to blame, Vernon takes the heat. Despite his easily-proven innocence, he is eventually accused of murdering more than 30 people in a killing binge throughout Texas. And here is the satire. Vernon is condemned by a media hungry for profit at any cost. The town where he lives is all but incorporated into a business franchise as journalists swarm into it to try and make a fast buck off the scandal....and a story of innocence is not nearly scandalous enough, and doesn't even begin to satisfy America's hunger for someone to blame. Pierre's novel is peopled with (mostly) one-dimensional, ugly, obese characters, extremely fitting for the satirical mood the novel takes. These characters beautifully represent the isolation, loneliness, and self-righteousness of American culture today. In Vernon's town, morals and values take a back seat to status and money. Vernon, a 15 year old loser, is the one character who grows, shows insight, remorse, and the entire range of human emotions. While he is a high-schooler in this book, he is much more adult than any other character, and wise beyond his years. Having the novel take place through his eyes is not making the reader see the world in a childike manner, but instead allows the reader a birds-eye view of American society at large, rendered simple and definable by one who is exiled by that very society. I was struck by the fact that this is DBC Pierre's first novel. He writes like someone with experience. "Vernon God Little" is a story that American's are aware of, but never tire of hearing. It is critical without being preachy, and literary without being boring. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Not your typical Booker Prize winner
Review: This is not your typical Booker Prize-winner. If you are expecting something along the lines of A.S. Byatt or Ian McEwan, something with a recognizable British Commonwealth feel to it like many Booker selections have, you will be quite surprised. Pleasantly surprised, I would guess, because Vernon God Little is a fresh, lively novel that smacks you in the face and cusses you out before you have time to put a crease in the binding. Language is the key to success in this spunky little book. Pierre creates a central-Texas vernacular that is so genuine that the book reads as if it were written by a beer-guzzling redneck with a ninth-grade education. But Pierre does more than just capture a regional idiosyncrasy; he also captures the heart and mind of a teenage boy, troubled and angry and rebellious in a world that doesn't give a kid like him a break. There are no characters in this book; these are real people living real lives, embellished and exaggerated with just the right touch by the author for artistic emphasis and effect. Their voices and their occasional insanity give the book the tangy, gritty barbecue flavor of a chicken wing platter that's been dropped on a sawdust floor. Vernon has a lot to say about American life and culture, and most of it is right on the money. He is quick to condemn the materialism and superficiality of America's heartland with its strip-malls and big hair and daytime talk show obsession. And the mockery that he makes of a tragic school killing spree is a ruthless commentary on just how easily we have come to accept a culture of guns and violence. Sometimes it takes an outsider to give us a true glimpse of ourselves.
Rating:
Summary: Yawn!
Review: I found this book to be boring, to have uninteresting characters, wrriten in a obviously overachieving style, and to address issues that are so overplayed today. My primary reason for disliking this book - I wont go over the plot since you probably already know the basics - is that the themes that it addresses - school violence, rural America, teenage sexuality, a revenge-driven criminal justice system in the US, families facing a tragedy trying to ignore it, etc. - are all so overplayed in so many other books. Not to say that they don't warrant attention, but Pierre offers no new meaningful insight into them. Some will even find the way he addresses the topics insulting - such as the way he describes rural folk as uneducated with a lack of family values. I hate "reality tv" (its not at all realistic so why call it such?) as much as possible, but I found his takes on relity tv to be incredibly stale and uninspiring.
Many praise his writing style, but I found it too contrived. Often when reading VGL I got the sense that Pierre was simply trying to hard to write in a unique style and say something interesting.
I found all the characters to be uninteresting - not surprising since each charatcer portrays a different stereotype and that stereotype is their only characteristic.
And this book isn't funny. I can pick up on satire and wit, but the attempts at satire in this book are far too over the top and absurd that they just aren't funny. Again, when trying to be satirical I think that Pierre was trying to hard, I could picture him sitting at his desk, writing, and wracking his brain trying to think of another interesting point to make. This book is above all, boring. As I said, it makes no new interesting insights into contemporary America, its a number of stereotypes rolled into one, making the story and the characters uninteresting and far too removed from reality for a reader (or at least me) to relate to at all.
Rating:
Summary: Two Thumbs Up as a Good Book
Review: My wife and I read the same books and compare our thoughts. Usually it amounts to her saying my ideas are stupid or me saying something of equal happiness to her, but it's all in good fun. VERNON GOD LITTLE is a most oddly titled book that I did not have any interest in reading, but at the instance of my wife that we share experiences I did sit down and give a good going over. I truly enjoyed it. It won't change the face of history but it's fun literature. My wife also enjoyed it, with similar sentiments of it being good and entertaining but not at that world changing "great book" level. To be fair, we rarely judge a book great (either individually or jointly). In fact, of the books from the past year we've only come to agreement on three "great books" (MY FRACTURED LIFE, SECRET LIFE OF BEES, and THE DA VINCI CODE). It does say something that we both agree VERNON GOD LITTLE is a "good book" though. Many times we are on opposite sides of the spectrum saying "I hate it" when the other one "loves" it. So with that in mind, it bodes well that we both recommend it as entertaining and good.
Rating: 
Summary: Holden he aint
Review: Vernon God Little has been compared to Catcher in the Rye. Both, after all, take a dark perspective on the tricky business of surviving adolescence; both focus on boys in their mid-teens. And there the similarity ends. The author owes a greater literary debt to Kafka and company than to Salinger, and sweet confused Vernon is no match for cynical prep dropout Holden. Having skimmed the comments, I see complaints about the book providing an inaccurate picture of the United States, specifically Texas, and about the fact that it's not laugh-out-loud funny. But I was far too absorbed in the innovative use of imagery, the plight of hapless Vernon, the treachery of his family/friends, and the general ineptitude of everyone involved with investigating the situation, to wonder why I hadn't been stricken by the giggles. I had one quarrel with VGL as I plowed through the story (I finally finished the book at 1:30 am, unable to sleep before finding out Vernon's fate): the key plot points make no sense from a real world perspective. Then I realized that the book had forced me to view life through teenaged boy lenses, and that most of the traumas that befell Vernon probably seemed random and illogical to him. (If they had made sense--that is, if he had perceived the world the way I do--he would have extricated himself from the quagmire long before his life rollercoastered out of his control.) Some reviewers have called this book a satire, but I prefer to think of it, as the title suggests, as a comedy. If you decide to venture into VGL, please keep in mind that comedies need not be populated by comedians, and that the fewer preconceptions you bring to this book, the greater the rewards you'll reap.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: I enjoyed the rebel spirit mixed with satire that "Vernon God Little" delivers with a punch. There are some elements similar to "My Fractured Life" and also to "Catcher in the Rye" but add a twist of Texas border town drawl. It is fresh and yet accessible.
Rating:
Summary: Holden Caulfield with a drawl
Review: Told through the voice of Holden Caulfield with a drawl, Vernon God Little is the unusual coming of age story of a fifteen year-old who flees Texas jurisdiction when he is questioned about the murder of sixteen of his classmates by his best friend Jesus. His escape includes a few tequila-filled days in Mexico which end up when he is seduced and setup by his "dream" girl Taylor Figueroa, captured and returned to Texas, tried on thirty-two counts of murder, convicted on sixteen and sentenced to death, injected with an anesthesia as a preliminary to lethal injection, and pardoned at the last minute. If this sounds wild and a bit ludicrous, it is. What keeps the story interesting, however, is the narrator's voice and his very unique perspective on life, Texas, family, media, and the U.S. of A. Think of A Confederacy of Dunces meets Catcher in the Rye and you have a taste of Vernon God Little. Throughout we are kept up-to-date on Vernon's "learnings," those nuggets of experience which he encapsulates so concisely. Indeed, the concluding section is the most enjoyable to read, as it entails Vernon's stay on death row and the lessons he is taught by fellow row-mate Lasalle. Just before being taken to his own lethal injection, Lasalle tells Vernon, "You're the God. Take responsibility. Exercise your power." Vernon takes this advice to concoct an ending which ties up all possible loose ends and - hey - saves his own life in the process. If you enjoyed John O'Toole Kennedy, you should enjoy this - although I suspect it may be an acquired taste.
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