Jennifer Government

Overall I found this book pretty disappointing. The premise is excellent - in fact, I planned on writing a book that was very similar - but the execution was not great.The most common flaw of ideological books is that they become too preachy and the characters end up feeling like the author's sockpuppets, parroting her/his view. Curiously I found Jennifer Government not preachy enough - I almost doubt that Max Barry even cares that much about the anti-capitalist cause. When capitalism is criticised the book mostly reaches for low lying fruit such as McDonalds and Walmart. I think it would have been better if the corporations were fictional or if they were real corporations but he changed their names. The guy being impaled on the Nike swoosh near the end of the book was just ridiculously cheesy.There's actually very little satire in this book and other than the fact that you have to pay upfront for an ambulance and the criminal justice system doesn't punish criminals unless their victims pay there was very little described about how horrible this world was or its history and how things worked. I also would have liked if part of the book took place in socialist Europe and Barry pointed out more of the contrasts between the capitalist corporate and socialist government run world.The narration felt more like a movie script than a book in many parts, and I think that Barry wrote this book with the hope that Hollywood would pick it up. This is ironic considering the book is meant to be a criticism of globalization and Americanization. Like some other reviewers said the explanation of Jennifer's tattoo was very disappointing and it could have been used to make a much greater point.This book also would have benefited from being set in the nearish future rather than in a parallel 2003. Some of the technological references are actually slightly dated 10 years later. In 2003 there wasn't really any social media and land lines were still about as common as cell phones. I think the book could have used more of a science fiction bent and setting it in say, 2060, would make the future it warns of seem a lot more plausible and scary.One thing I did like about the book was the linguistic aspect. In the Jennifer Government universe English was renamed American and regional and national English accents become a rarity. In Jennifer Government English people, New Zealanders and Australians speak exactly the same as Californians. This raises a fear that's not completely unwarranted as a close Australian friend of mine tells me that Australian teenagers are starting to sound more like Americans and less like Australians, even to the point of using words like "dude" and calling the thing you read in the morning with breakfast a "noozpaper".The book was a quick and at times fun read, but I found it overall a letdown.

I first heard of this novel when someone asked Margaret Atwood in a radio interview whom she was reading. Is it any wonder that the author of that brilliant novel THE HANDMAID'S TALE named this one? Set sometime in the near future, this novel is about a world overrun by American big business. The "World Map of United States Federated Economic Blocs" covers all of the Western Hemisphere, a large portion of Europe, parts of Africa and all of Australia. Workers take for their last names that of the corporations for which they work so we have Hack Nike, Theodore Pepsi, Violet ExxonMobil and Jennifer Government et al. (You will hoot when your learn deep into the novel the significance of the barcode tattoo under Jennifer's left eye.) Her daughter Kate attends a Mattel School and carries a Barbie lunchbox. This caustic satire gets started when Hack Nike, through a contract he enters into-- without reading-- with upper management, must murder someone buying a new Nike brand of shoes in order to enhance sales. He goes to the Police who, through a misunderstanding, think he wants them to wipe out the customer and subcontract the job to the NRA. Mr. Barry's aim is as accurate and deadly as that of his character Billy Bechtel and his pen far more poisonous than the "chemicals" Hack releases in a McDonald's for-- in the words of Hack-- advertising to children, raping the environment and forcing out small business. The author's opinions -- or at least the comments of his characters-- about business and goverment sound eerily familiar: the military has a healthy "disrespect" for democracy, the Government takes months to organize a bake sale and also uses fifteen people to do a task that three people would perform in the private sector. Mr. Barry is right good at phrase-making or turning an existing phrase upside down. Hack Nike's "chemical weapons attack" on McDonald's will cost the industry twenty million in "brand" damage; and John Nike's dream of big corporations without governmental interference will open up a "brave new commercial" world. John Nike sees in the Nike building in L. A. a "small, shabby cube farm" of low-level managers. Nothing is off-limits to this writer, including his native Australia where the main office of McDonald's is located in Sydney and Hack attacks a store in Melbourne. Here most of the customers had cellphones "pressed" to their ears. The near future is already here! This novel cries out to be made into a movie directed by Tim Robbins with Susan Sarandon in the role of Jennifer Government.

I did like this book and would recommend it to others, even those who may be put off by its reputation as a sort of pop criticism of free market ideology and limited government taken to its logical extremes.The villains of the story, who engage in totally amoral and immoral behaviour in pursuit of profits, are at least possible within that scenario and not simply a "bogey" of anti-capitalists. The main villain, John Nike (all characters adopt as part of their name the companies for which they work, hence Jennifer Government etc.), resembles, or so I thought, Gordon Gecko from the Wall Street films.The story is character driven, as different characters are introduced and their stories intersect there is more revealed about each of them, some of them have a past involving one another which is crucial to the plot but not apparent straight away.The style and pace of writing I thought was good, although some of the chapters I felt read a little like digressions, I totally understand why they were included and I think the author was attempting to add something to this or that character's depth but I would have employed some more editorial skills and cut these out completely. This is perhaps a matter of taste as someone else may decide that its these chapters which are the making of the book, I just did not feel they were that necessary.With what is essentially a sort of "futurism", or science fiction, there is always an amusing mix of prophetic and "missing the mark". So its amusing to read about people sending telex or lax security at corporate headquarters alongside what seems like more on the mark predictions about privatization taken to extremes.Some of the content about industrial espionage by powerful corporate entities, hackers and virus planting to influence business mergers, market share/dominance and financial speculation all has the "ring of truth" about it and there probably are contexts in which something like the more extreme behaviour does exist. It is an older book though, so I remind myself that some of the content may have been more novel when it was written than it is today, perhaps. Recommended. Memorable and likeable characters.

Jennifer Government is set in the near future, where global corporations rule the world, the government is a largely ineffectual annoyance to them, and the police and National Rifle Association are guns for hire.Jennifer is so named because she works for the government – employees take their last names from their employers. The other main character, Hack Nike, is a poorly paid merchandising officer near the bottom of the pecking order within Nike. He’s promoted by two sociopath executive marketing managers called John who want his help promoting their new line of trainers in a daring campaign.Hack signs on the dotted line without reading the small print of the contract to find that he has agreed to murder a bunch of teenagers at a shopping mall. Hack goes to the police but instead of starting an investigation into his allegations they take the contract on and then in turn subcontract to the NRA. Such is the state of the society Barry has constructed that no-one seems to be bothered that they are being paid in the name of capitalism for multiple murder.Jennifer soon gets wind of the nefarious campaign organised by John Nike for whom she holds a serious grudge, but rather than being about any one character this story is told from multiple viewpoints. The characters weave in and out of each others’ paths and Barry does a grand job of interweaving the narratives. The farce escalates until two packs of corporations wage war on each other – their allegiances based on the loyalty scheme they have signed up for – with the government caught in the middle.There’s some rather cute anachronisms carried through into this future world which remind me of the whirling tapes and CRTs in the 1973 Westworld film but all in all this is a much more accomplished novel than Barry's previous novel 'Company' imo.

This book takes you into a future which is seemingly extrapolated from the course that the world has taken since the 1980's; into a place where seemingly everything is a commodity. Whilst recent events might be seen to avert any such future from occuring, it still fits as a view of the ultimate excesses of a capitalist system. Whether the reader hold the same view depends on the person.The tale does jump around with seemingly unconnected characters, finding their stories firmly linked together by the end of the book. The pace is well done, and whilst it takes a little time to visualise the era in which it is set, it does happen.If you like to challenge yourself and your world views then this is certainly a text that you should consider. If you just like a good futuristic story then Jennifer Government again serves well here.

This is from one of my favourite authors, though this copy was a gift for a relative. I've since purchased my own copy.I don't want to reveal anything about the plot, but the basic idea depicts a world where the government don't really 'exist' as we know it, and almost everything is done in the Private Sector.The author also created a long running online game that links to the book, I can't mention more about that here but there is a link to it in the book.

The dystopian novel should,I think, hopefully, make you think on the world around you, pass the test of "is this credible/possible and have a hero/ antihero on your journey through it.A lot to ask when your almost certainly compared to Orwell ,Huxley Attwood,Bradbury et al."Jennifer " has a splendid dystopian view ,the global brand is the new god alive with a class system based on you being literally a part of a brandWhere it falls down for me is the main characters portrayed here are straight out a script for a hollywood film, Jennifer is ex super brand woman,martial arts expert , sexy single mum,government agent,Buy is a fallen man looking for redemption,John Nike is super villian, far too many cliches here for meCompare it as I did with the more believable and rounded characters of Orwells Smith and Attwoods Offred and I was left disappointed.