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Title: Jennifer Government : A Novel by Max Barry ISBN: 0-385-50759-3 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 21 January, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.75 (122 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Highly amusing, rollicking good fun!
Comment: Highly entertaining, and more than just a bit disturbing, "Jennifer Government" is Max Barry's frank look at our society's future existence. In Barry's vision, the world is ran by giant American corporations (all but the pathetic French, of course), taxes are illegal, the Police and NRA are killers for hire, and employees take the last name of the company they work for. In short, it's a paradise of free market greed!
Hack Nike is a lowly merchandising officer with a penchant for not being the sharpest tool in the shed. Desperate to change his living circumstances, he blindly signs a promotional contract with shoe executives, John Nike and John Nike, unwittingly agreeing to do the unthinkable: kill ten people to boost sales of the hot, new Nike Mercury, a shoe going for $2,500! Paralyzed with fear, Hack decides to go to the Police, who are more than happy to take care of the problem-for a price. Unknown to Hack, the Police contract out the job to the NRA and this is where the story takes off!
Enter Jennifer Government, a tough-talking Federal agent with a barcode tattoo, secret past, and vengeance to do what's right. She rabidly pursues Hack, determined to flush out the perpetrators, ultimately going after John Nike with zeal. Murder and mayhem follow Jennifer as she pursues John from the U.S.A., land of the Free Market, to London, Parliament, and places in between. No one is safe in John Nike's global free enterprise scheme!
With a spectacular cast of major players such as Jennifer Government, John Nike, and Billy NRA one would expect minor characters to take a backseat. Not in this book! Buy Mitsui, Hack Nike, Claire Sears, and the unemployed rogue, Violet, all play integral parts in the tightly woven storyline, bringing an incredible depth and hilarity to the plot.
Hospitals who won't take patients without a credit card, airlines that only allow certain "team" members to fly, schools backed by toy makers who promote their products in the classroom. It's a world gone monetarily mad!
In a world where frequent buyer programs are the rage, your restaurant affiliation could mean your life, and the almighty advertising dollar is king, "Jennifer Government" paints a world that could be our bleak future-for a price-I'm sure.
Rating: 4
Summary: Snow Crash without the cyberpunk
Comment: First, to dismiss the cover quote that describes it as Catch-22 meets the Matrix -- more like Snow Crash meets Moby Dick. And it's clear that Max Barry is a big Neal Stephenson fan, as the world overrun by corporate America is a very Stephensonian theme. In Barry's world, corporate America controls not only the US (and the entire western hemisphere) but also England, Australia, and Japan, and the consumerist/corporate culture (referred to as "capitalizm") is so pervasive that a person's last name is determined by the company they work for.
Hack Nike works for Nike in Australia (a USA country). He gets himself involved in a plot by Nike.au management to gain word-of-mouth for their latest sneaker line by killing people who buy the sneakers (a la 1980s gangland fashion wars), which draws the attention of Jennifer Government, a former ad agency wunderkind turned FBI agent (or something like it) with a bar code tattooed below her eye. Hack goes to the Police, who instead of making an arrest on the plotters subcontract the murders to the NRA (now a heavily armed privatized army-for-hire), making an enemy of John Nike, the VP who came up with the idea in the first place and the subject of substantial obsessing by Jennifer. And the corporate world itself is a character, as the plot line that started with some very shady dealing builds towards an all-out corporate civil war between two megalopolies that started off as frequent-flyer incentive plans and grew into political factions dominated by big-name megacorporations like Nike, Reebok, AT&T, IBM, and even Boeing.
The plot goes from Australia to Los Angeles to London, its characters let loose in a world where a hostile takeover involves cyberterrorism and paramilitary action as well as stock market manipulation and the Government stands seemingly powerless against the idea that "free trade == anything goes". It's a very fast-paced read, to the point where the book's sense of timing is a little lost in the shuffle, but it makes for some definite popcorn-movie reading. The book represents a sharp rebuke to the forces of laissez-faire capitalism as both of its protagonists are shown journeying away from the corporate mindset that built this strange, homogenized mess of a world, and also shows a sense of just how strange reality could be.
This book isn't perfect. It is, as I said, very derivative of Neal Stephenson's book Snow Crash, and that tends to mute the creativity of the book (though it does manage to avoid some of Stephenson's stranger plot twisting). Also, the book carries not one but two romantic subplots, one of which is absolutely critical to the story and one of which fits in but seems a bit forced and unnecessary at times. The title character remains a bit mysterious even at the end when the meaning behind her bar code is revealed, but she recalls the best of action movie rogue cop characters like John McLean or Martin Riggs. Like I said, popcorn reading. It will be interesting to see what the movie based on this book will be like -- it's hard to imagine this story being toned down by removing the controversial bits (like the namedropping of major companies).
I do recommend this book. It's not the humorfest implied by some reviewers -- in fact it's a remarkably gritty and occasionally bloody book, and it sacrifices realism to the plot on a number of occasions -- but it still works as a sort of grim reductio-ad-absurdum satire where laughs are beside the point. I think it will make an excellent movie, as long as the movie is kept reasonably faithful to the book, and I think Max Barry probably has a long future as a cult author along the lines of Chuck Palahniuk ahead of him.
Rating: 3
Summary: You'd think he'd have it down by now
Comment: Okay. I really don't want to crap all over Max Barry here. But this book was lacking in a lot of areas that I know Max is capable of handling. The thing that got me most is how every time there is a phone conversation, Max still put the dialogue in. How many times can a guy read everybody answer the phone the same way? There wasn't as much cleverness in this one as there was in 'Syrup' either, which would have been cool.
I did like the idea behind this story; I thought it was very original and unique. Everything fits together nicely as far as plot goes, but normally with fiction, when a story has an over-elaborate plot, the characters tend to suffer. Which is what happened. Still, read it. But not while driving.
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Title: Syrup by Maxx Barry ISBN: 0140291873 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 03 July, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Contortionist's Handbook by Craig Clevenger ISBN: 1931561486 Publisher: MacAdam/Cage Publishing Pub. Date: 01 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.50 |
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Title: Pattern Recognition by William Gibson ISBN: 0399149864 Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons Pub. Date: 03 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow ISBN: 076530953X Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 05 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan ISBN: 0345457684 Publisher: Del Rey Books Pub. Date: 04 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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