I signed up for this one because of that idea I have of reading all the booker winners. I wouldn’t have read it otherwise, because I had got it in to my head that I wouldn’t like it – well I was wrong.
Teenager Vernon Gregory Little’s life has been changed by the Columbine-style slaughter of a group of students at his high school. Soon his hole-in-the-wall town is blanketed under a media siege, and Vernon finds himself blamed for the killing (rather than the real culprit, a friend of Vernon’s). Eulalio Ledesma is his particular nemesis, manipulating things so that Vernon becomes the fulcrum for the bizarre and vengeful impulses of the townspeople of Martirio. After a truly surrealistic set of events, Vernon finds himself heading for a fateful assignation in Mexico with the delectable Taylor Figueros (everyone in the book has names as odd as the author’s).
I actually really enjoyed this book. I can see that some people haven’t enjoyed it at all. I did think it was very well written, with an irreverent, but very authentic narrative voice. Vernon Little was for me a character I couldn’t help but like. The last third of the book was certainly unputdownable.
heavenali 
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