Vernon God Little

Inspired by Jen's plan to read all the Man Booker prize winning books, I bought Vernon God Little (by DBC Pierre) a while back. It finally floated to the top of my to-read list, so I figured I'd give it a go.

I always find these literary masterpieces rather daunting to start. There's a girding of the loins, a deep breath to be taken before embarking on them. I think it goes back to a lot of badly translated classics that I've read in the past - always worth a read, even though the prose flows like a river of bricks. But then, as often as not, they take me by surprise.

This was one of those ones - lyrical, intense, and at times impossible to put down. It was responsible for several very late nights and cranky following days as I stayed up reading. It's story of a teenager wrongly accused of a crime, written in the first person. It chronicles the gathering of evidence for and against him, the various people in his life - his mother and her friends, schoolmates, and others who are brought in on the tide of publicity surrounding the crime.

This is definitely worth a read, and will propel on to try to get through more of the Man Booker winners.