Turn the Knife.

Vernon God Little: Lets not talk about the plot, its ok in the beginning because there is not much of it and the beginning is always easy, it always brings the promise of something different which is almost always not there, which happens in the case of Vernon God Little as well. While reading this one I had that same sense of bewilderment as I had while reading, "To kill a mocking bird". It is like when you are reading to kill a mocking bird, you cant help but marvel at the clarity and ease with which the story unravels from a child’s point of view, bringing out the irrationality of grown-ups’ behavior which we come across as a child and kept wondering why don’t they understand, how could they not see it in the simple logics of a kid’s mind, isn’t it simple? They just have to remember…. weren’t they kids once?

So I guess the prime thing is when an author goes down the memory lane not just to relive an incident from the compassionate or amused eyes of an adult, but justifying, sensing and reasoning everything as a child or a teenager like in this case. This method of storytelling is refreshing, nostalgic, and very rare no doubt because it is highly demanding for the memory cells not just in remembering the facts but in accomplishing the superhuman tasks of narrating from a child’s rationale with the language commands of an adult. Though this quality stands way unprecedented (as far as my reading forays are concerned) in case of mockingbird in comparison to Vernon.

The other two things, which distinctly mark it out, are: Firstly, how Vernon compares an emotional bond to a knife, and the leisure with which this analogy is explained not in one go but in bursts, talking about it every now and then in context with the plot, especially by the end when Vernon watches a newborn playing with its Mom, he points it out as "the knife" has been planted. This analogy depicts the profound woe & confusion of a teenager who just realized all the transitory-ness and turbulences in relationships.
The second thing being the funny but situational substitution of Vernon’s middle name, from Vernon Gonzalez Little, to Vernon Godzilla Little, to so on.

VGL is a humorous insight into the mind of a teenager who is coming to terms with reality in a rush, which is triggered by unfortunate incidents happening around him. Vernon is depicted as teenager who has been fed too high on media, Van Damme movies and consumerism, shown in the book by the fact that his every other thought runs to his Nikes or, a bewildered comparison of what was happening around him, to what it would have been like in a movie.