Jennifer Government

Rating:
Summary: Capitalizm Run Amok -- Our Future??
Review: Like others who have reviewed Jennifer Government, I first heard of the book through the NationStates.net online game, and I was intrigued enough by the sample chapter posted on MaxBarry.com to track the book down and buy it. While Jennifer Government hardly compares to Catch-22, 1984, or any of the works of Douglas Adams, it is a rather sarcastic, witty tale of Capitalizm (Max Barry's spelling) gone amok, where the world is divided into various economic blocs and people take as a surname the name of the company they work for (or, as in the case of one of the characters, who have no last name due to unemployment).


Hack Nike is one such character who is given what looks like the "opportunity of a lifetime" when John and John Nike ask him to help them with their ad campaign for the new, $2500 Nike Mercurys. Thinking to give his career a boost and make some money, Hack signs the contract that the two Johns give him without reading it first, after which they inform him of his assignment: in order to build the proper street cred for the shoes, Hack has to go out and kill at least 10 Nike Mercury customers at random, making it look as if the crime were committed by ghetto kids. Horrified, he takes the matter to the Police, who agree to assist him --for a fee -- by assigning hit men to the operation. This in turn attracts the attention of the titular character herself, who is injured in an attempt to stop the assassins.

What I like about this book the most is the fact that while the writing may appear simple to some, that is actually quite deceptive. Unlike Orwell's 1984 or Joseph Heller's Catch-22, both of which seem to use a lot of long, flowery sentences, Max Barry manages to create a rich and complex world in which the almighty dollar is king and one had better have a platinum card before calling the police or ambulance -- and he does it all with so-called "simple" sentences!

Overall, I would say that Jennifer Government is an awesome book that is definitely worth a look-see. I'll be keeping an eye out for new material from Max Barry in the future!

Rating:
Summary: You'd think he'd have it down by now
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: It even has a stupid title! Don't waste your time...
Review: This book came highly recommended from several people whose opinions I usually value. I'll have to learn to be less trusting in the future. Jennifer Government is a waste of an interesting idea, and probably a waste of the paper it's printed on. The pages of this book would be better used wiping an old man's butt than for reading.

Where should we begin? How about with the story's setting, which seems to change every page. One minute a character is in Australia, then New Zealand, then London, then LA...I was so confused as the story progressed that I just stopped trying. And there are too many minor characters that the writer wants readers to care about. Mr. Barry, we don't care. We don't even care about your main characters. Barry tries to show how his characters grow, but instead, he just confuses readers. Character development in this story can be compared to fast food. Both are bad, occasionally nauseating, pose for quality, and occur quickly.

When readers finish the book, they're still unsure about who the characters really are. For example, is Hack a wishy-washy corporate slave or a courageous vigilante? I still don't know. And you can't respect a story that begins without a background. In Jennifer Government, things just are. One or two pages or background information, carefully spliced into the story, would have sufficed. Is Barry that stupid or just that lazy? It's like building a skyscraper without a foundation. No respectable story can rest comfomtably on a foundation of nothing.

What irritated me most about this book is the hollow, almost laughably phony dialogue. You have Jennifer dropping F-bombs and cursing like an Irish cop in one scene, and in the next, calling her daughter "sweetie" and patting her on the head. Jennifer is either schizophrenic (did I spell that right?) or a good actor. Or perhaps it's the writer's fault. No good character is that inconsistent. She can still be a warm, caring mother without babying a daughter who is supposed to be abnormally intelligent. I don't think it's possible to turn on and off your pissed-off attitude the way Jennifer does. While we're on the subject, the daughter's dialogue ranks among the worst in the book. It made me want to slap her every time she opened her mouth. And what's with all the unnecessary swearing and course language? It doesn't offend me, it just seems trite and stupidly out of place. I think that Barry enjoys being perverse for the sake of perversity. Hee hee...I just said a naughty word in my book, tee hee. How juvenile!

Jennifer's tattoo was the only reason I finished the book. I wanted to know why she had it. Barry builds up suspense about the tattoo throughout the book, only to let down readers at the end. Actually, calling the tattoo incident a letdown is like calling Michael Jordan a mediocre athlete. It's so much more than a letdown! Barry could have come up with a really cool story behind the tattoo. Heck, I could think for five minutes and come up with a decent story. But what's the verdict? She got the tattoo because she liked Malibu Barbie? Barry must have run out of steam at the end of the book, because that explanation is unnaceptable at best. How dare he be so lazy!

The plot of the story collapses under its own weight. Too much is going on, too many characters fade in and out, and readers become annoyed and angry. The book sucks. The movie will probably be pretty good because it's based on a good idea, but the idea wasn't presented on paper in a coherent and entertaining way. And one more thing. Mr. Barry, people in the United States don't care about Australia. Call it a global narcissism, but we care about ourselves almost exclusively, although the shameful actions of our political leaders would have you believe otherwise. So if you want to succeed in the United States, don't base your books in Australia. Because Australia sucks, almost as bad as Jennifer Government.


Rating:
Summary: Smoke and Mirrors
Review: This book, like a well-executed marketing campaign, is full of empty promises. A Grand Idea - which is nothing more than a twist on other successful books of this nature - surrounded by television-level writing, nestled in "Wouldn't it be crazy if?" execution that anyone over the age of 20 should be ashamed to buy into. The literary equivalent of a get-rich-buying-and-selling-real estate infomercial. If you held the book up to a mirror, would it have a reflection? Probably not. It never had a soul to begin with. Read this book if you think fast food commericals are hilarious.

Rating:
Summary: Latter-day "1984" with superior sense of humor
Review: Welcome to the future; there are no nations, per se...only international trade alliances. The "New World Order" is strictly profit-driven, not ideologically motivated. George Orwell's much anticipated Big Brother has instead turned out to be Big Business in Australian satirist Max Barry's rich (and completely absurdist) dark comedy that looks at commerce and the future in a very similar manner to Norman Jewison's only loosely-based sports film "Rollerball".

This is a book targeted toward the would-be twentysomething activists who failed to show up in droves in order to vote George W. Bush out of office this past Election Day; the anti-globalization angle is obvious, with all the usual international MNC villains (Nike, McDonald's) as well as the usual current cronies of the US right (law enforcement, the National Rifle Association) given the obvious reviling that one would come to expect. Amidst all of this is the story of a small group of people whom the author desperately attempts to humanize within the cogs of the machine that is hypercorporate society.

Being both outside that demographic as well as far from sympathetic to the antiglobalist cause, I found the book to be more entertaining from a humorous angle than effective as a moralistic literary crusade; perhaps the author is skilled enough as a storyteller to at least partialy mask his own agenda, a skill that eludes certain other authors who have also won Academy Awards for directing "documentary" films. However it is also at least somewhat likely that the author's work lacks sufficient passion to motivate the reader, to steer the reader to the place where the author wishes to take them.

In the end it was an enjoyable enough read. The plot twists were rather predictable (and I won't divulge them here) and the ending can likely be foreseen several chapters in advance. However, the author does succeed in creating a rather interesting vision of Dystopia worthy of comparison with the all-time standard set by Orwell's "1984". It's a book that probably should be read by more people of diverse age groups and social/political leanings and a suitable page-turner if you want to get a little deeper than standard summer light-reading fare; more accurately rated at three and-a-half stars.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent satire
Review: While I would have to argue that comparisons to "1984" or "Catch-22" are a bit extravagant, Max Barry has nonetheless written a scathing satire of our consumer culture that is well worth reading. Set in a near future where taxes have been abolished, the government privatized and the NRA is outsourcing its private army to the world's largest corporations, "Jennifer Government" is by turns funny and terrifying.

The novel kicks off in a fashion that would be funny if it wasn't so deadly serious. As Nike assassinates customers in order to develop street credibility, the Government attempts to halt the carnage. The result is a trade war that extends beyond the use of advertising and into the use of heavy artillery. Along the way, the reader is introduced to several remarkable characters, including the eponymous Jennifer Government, who, while stylized, are remarkably effective.

At the same time, the writing and pacing are both excellent; a big problem with satire is that it all too often bogs down under the weight of its own righteous outrage. Fortunately, nothing could be further from the case with "Jennifer Government", the story hums along at break-neck pace, and the dialogue is snappy, without being abrupt.

As with any satire, the reader would be well advised to take this novel with a grain of salt. I think Max Barry would be the first to admit that it is unlikely that Burger King and McDonalds are going to engage in a shooting war any time soon. That said, he does make a powerful statement about the deadening effects modern corporate culture can have on the human psyche, not to mention mankind, and the planet, as a whole.

"Jennifer Government" is a well written, entertaining satire; the author injects his dystopian future with just enough absurdity to keep the book from bogging down, but not so much that it becomes completely nonsensical. Ultimately "Jennifer Government" is both an engaging read, and a reminder that the important things in life don't come from a store.