Vernon God Little

DBC Pierre

Lumps of plot-driving excrement continue to hit the fan over DBC Pierre'sBooker winning debut novel. Complaints that it's silly and nasty and ridiculous miss the point, surely, of an engaging farce. Viz magazine crossed with Holden Caulfield. Complaints, too, that the Booker win was simply a cheap anti-American stunt from a left-leaning arts establishment. Certainly its landscape is an America of fat foolish women and an absurd media poised to descend on anyone lucky (or unlucky) enough to be able to make a circus freak of himself. The pseudonym DBC stands for Dirty But Clean as we all learnt in the aftermath of the Booker win. But for those who hated the book but scent Booker-boosted earning power DBC is "Disgusting But Cunning".

It's a measure of the warped nature of the book that its only truly savage scene is not the school massacre with which it kicks off but a teen date which ends with one of the school's hunks dumping his ugly date at a hog farm.

Not all of it works and while its dialogue delivers plenty of pleasure and most of its similes soar there are plenty of duds too. Nothing can meaningfully sound "like melted wood" however interesting the idea might seem at first. Still I found something to tickle me on most of its pages.