AWARDS First-time writer wins Britain's Booker Prize

'Vernon God Little' is a satirical novel about contemporary America.
By BETH GARDINER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LONDON -- Peter Finlay was watching television when the idea for his novel, "Vernon God Little," winner of this year's prestigious Booker Prize, came to him.
News footage showed a teenage boy -- the suspect in a school shooting -- climbing into a police car. Finlay, who wrote under the pen name D.B.C. Pierre, said in an interview recently that he started thinking about the adolescent's ruined life and wondering what was going through his mind.
Sharp satire
The result is a sharp, satirical look at contemporary America, a darkly comic novel written in the voice of a teenager who is falsely accused of a Texas school shooting. It was Finlay's first book, and it won Britain's biggest literary award Oct. 14.
Finlay said that "Vernon God Little" is shaped by "a dynamic of guilt and redemption" that comes from his own turbulent life. The $80,000 prize will go straight to his many creditors, he said.
Finlay, an Australian who now lives in Ireland, doesn't remember who the teenage suspect was or where the crime happened. But it prompted him to think about what happens in the wake of a highly public tragedy.
Vernon Little, 15, is the novel's central character, and his voice is biting and distinctive. Readers meet him just after his friend, Jesus Navarro, kills 16 high school students and himself in the fictional Texas town of Martirio. Blame falls on the innocent Vernon, who becomes the target of the town's wrath. Fearing he'll get the death penalty, he goes on the run.
The book pokes harsh fun at Texas trailer park inhabitants, whose excitement at their brush with television fame overpowers all else. The book also targets the sensationalistic journalists who offer the trailer park residents the spotlight.
Finlay said he also meant to satirize a condescending, caricatured view he thinks some people overseas have of the United States.
John Carey, chairman of the Booker judges, hailed the novel as "a coruscating black comedy reflecting our alarm, but also our fascination with modern America."
The initials in his pen name stand for "Dirty But Clean," a nickname he picked up as a teenager.