Rating: 
Summary: Max Barry is a satirical genius.
Review: This book is wonderful, I could hardly put it down. Max Barry delivers a fast-paced, sad-but-true follow up to his previous effort, Syrup, which also thoroughly entertained me. Is it just me, or does Max Barry's literary voice cry out like the textual equivalent of Barry White?
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty entertaining - could have been much more.
Review: I came across Max Barry's website last week and read both sample chapters for Syrup and Jennifer Government. After reading both sample chapters, I decided to pick up Syrup as I liked that first chapter much more. Unfortunately it was out-of-print, so I purchased a copy of Jennifer Government instead. I'm still looking for a new copy of Syrup!Jennifer Government: I found this book to be an above average read and the pages flew by seamlessly. The characters are very one dimensional - intentionally so. The setting and the back-story are the real interesting parts of this novel. Barry shows us an incomplete vision of an "Inverse 1984"; a world almost dominated by marketing, corporations, and business consortiums instead of an all powerful government. Unlike Orwell's 1984, the mood tries to remain lighthearted and funny. It shows our world at an unspecified time slightly in our future with virtually the same level of technology. I felt that Barry should have spent a lot more time developing the background: just how did the world end up the way it does? He does not spend much this as the novel is just too fast paced to get a true appreciation or understanding as to how everyone gets to this point. I did get a chuckle at a couple characters that indirectly sneered at 1984 though. Somewhat awkward is a style that is fast paced, humorous, and offbeat(similar to Douglas Adams) mixed with violence, blood, and the murder of innocents as a marketing tool. This works sometimes and other times it just doesn't feel quite right (especially when it shows flashes of unavoidable seriousness). Very few characters have moral depth, with the exception of the Jennifer Government character and a stockbroker named "Buy." Again, this is intentional. But even Jennifer may be driven much more by personal revenge than a sense of outrage at the evil lengths certain corporate executive go to in order to win market share and make money. The ending, for me, was very unsatisfying. I'm not sure why Barry chose to end the novel like this. In no way did I feel that the bad guy got just punishment for his actions. In fact, the level of "justice" pales in comparison to the awful crimes committed. Maybe Barry was making a statement about the rich and powerful with this -- as we see such similar injustices performed in the real world. But, as a piece of fiction, the end was not satifsfying to me. I would recommend this book if you are in the mood for something different. This will make a much better movie than a novel - if the studio is allowed to maintain the usage of commonly know companies (McDonalds, Burger King, Nike) and logos. And, hopefully, a movie version will have a much different ending.
Rating:
Summary: Why aren't there more books like this?
Review: It's not often you see car chases and satire together. But then this isn't your typical satire. The book is set in an ultra-consumerist world where everything--even the government!--is privatized. Sounds like the lead-in for an anti-capitalist rant, right? Wrong. Barry uses the setting as a playground, happily propelling the characters through its insanities but never stopping to preach about how terrible it all is. There's no time for that, not when Jennifer Government is having gun battles with NRA assassins, corporations are massing private armies, and a main character is entangled in a love triangle with two sisters. The story's the thing, and it's an awesomely fast one. There's more plot here than character, that's for sure, and at times you wish that Barry would just hold up for a second and take a breath. There are no deep insights into the human psyche. But this is probably the most entertaining satire you'll ever read, and one of the slyest thrillers. Less comedy and more thrills than Syrup (Barry's first novel), Jennifer Government is a broader, more ambitious and more compelling book. Especially at this price, it's well worth the money.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant... sorta
Review: A friend of mine sent me an e-mail telling me to try this new, FREE online game at http://www.nationstates.com
Being an avid gamer I checked it out. Nationstates is a game that Max Barry made to coincide with the release of his book, Jennifer Government. In the game you get to run your own country and respond to issues that effect how your country develops. It seems Barry wrote the coding for the game himself, (maybe with help, I dunno) for the purpose of promoting the book. You have to admire his spirit, especially since he took the risk of getting killed on the bandwidth alone.
I had read the first chapter online, and I was a bit surprised at how brief it was, for just one chapter. If that set the pace for the book, and it does, then I felt it would be a fast paced read and not very deep. Well, that's true and it's not true. In my humble opinion it's no Matrix. The Wachowski brothers are obviously very avid students of eastern philosophy and The Matrix is full of it. Jennifer Government's symbolism doesn't begin to approach that kind of depth. If it does, it went over my head. There are some shootouts though, but nothing that defys the laws of physics in the over the top way the Matrix does. The comparison to Catch-22 is more realistic, but still may be more hype than substance. What attracts me to the book and made it a great read for me (I finished it in 2 days) was the satire, which is brilliant, and the indepth plots involving marketing and how Barry guides you around the various vices of capitalism.
And there is some freakin' hilarious stuff in it. Sure it's over the top in its assessment of capitalism, but Barry still manages to hit the nail on the head. A comparison to 1984 wouldn't be a stretch at all.
However, toward the end, the books seems to deteriorate into familiar (typical) characters, and things start to feel a bit rushed or glanced over. While the center protagonist is Jennifer Government, the character with the most depth is actually the trader. I won't spoil it, but his character development over the course of the book was my favorite.
I think the book kicks arse. It's brilliant spots and some spots are ho-hum, but I'd definitely recommend it. I do hope it gets made into a movie. For the author's second book, I think it's great. Great job Max. ;-p
Rating:
Summary: Biting wit
Review: In this, Barry's second hilarious novel, we enter a world not-too-far removed from our own: capitalism is king, commercialism is rampant, and marketing is profligate. Individuality has been reduced to the point that individuals take their last name from the organization for which they work; our hero, John Nike, is one such consumerist citizen.
John Nike works at his eponymous company, desperate for the chance to move into Marketing. He gets the opportunity, and his first assignment is to arrange the random killings of ten young consumers in an attempt to build the "street cred" for Nike's (the company's) newest shoe creation. The product has been heavily marketed for over a year, but never released to store shelves. Demand is great, but John's conscience is greater. The other John Nike, John's boss, plans to release ten thousand pairs of the shoes to the market-at twenty-five hundred dollars a pair. With an overseas production cost of thirty-eight cents each, evil John Nike sees nothing but profit-if his marketing campaign builds the purchasing frenzy he desires. Jennifer Government (guess where she works) must help our hero trap his nemesis and other assorted evil CEOs and stop the madness before too many people are killed.
Don't be frightened by the dark nature of the material in a post-Columbine, post-9/11 world: Barry's brutally funny satire hits all the right notes of absurdity, pathos, and romance. His visions of teenagers getting bank loans at ATMs in the mall, guerilla marketing among the fast-food chains, and the police subcontracting to thugs and low-life criminals to preserve their own bottom line is only a minute step beyond the world in which we are living.
Barry, whose first novel, Syrup, was an equally vicious satire of the Cola Wars, writes with the knowledge of a man from the inside, and the vision of one who can discern right from wrong even if his characters often cannot. He is a singular comic genius, whose novel will have you laughing even as you ponder its prescience.
Rating:
Summary: Good Fast Read
Review: At first, I was a bit put off by the rapid (and somewhat abrupt) pace of this book, and I had little hope for it. Before long, though, I began to be sucked in, and soon after that, I was completely unable to put it down. The characters are somewhat static and lack growth (although they are deep enough to care about), the settings are rather comically one-dimensional, and there is very little time wasted on unnecessary descriptions. This book is all about a very fast-paced and increasingly complex plot, and will probably make a superb movie. If you require something to be deep and meaningful for it to be worth your time, this is not the book for you. If you are looking for a fun and quick read, however, this book would be very hard to beat.
Rating: 
Summary: Dissapointing but still Entertaining
Review: The premise of "Jennifer Government" is that corporations now control the world, for all practical purposes. The USA has deregulated everything and now people are defined by who they work for, literally. They take there last names from their companies, which we learn when introduced to one of the protagonists of this little satire named Hack Nike. Guess what he does? Basically the story, situated in Melbourne, Australia, but also covering LA and London, starts out with Hack being approached by two Nike Marketing men, John Nike and John Nike. They offer him a promotion to marketing, and he readily signs the contract, not reading the part that requires him to kill 10 people in order to build "street cred" for Nike's newest pair of $2500 sneakers. Hack goes to the police for help, but they end up actually convincing him to subcontract the hit to them, and they subcontract it to the NRA, now a fully armed and operational rifle association. This sets the whole story in motion, and the story, for what it is, is well told. Jennifer Government, a Government agent with a grudge against one of the John Nike's, is brought in to solve the Nike Store murders. Other tales are woven through this plot, and they all end up basically where they started. It's an entertaining ride, but an empty one. The story moves quickly, and has moments of pure hilarity, such as what corporate competiton would become when things like murder aren't prosecuted unless the victim's family can pony up the loot to pay the cops to investigate it. But the message the Barry wants to send, that corporations are cutthroat and evil, is undermined by the fact that there is really only one corporate antagonist, and he seems to do things without authorization. Barry seems to admit that corporations aren't evil, just profit-hungry, and that the market more than anything else affects their decisions. He has many clever little twists thrown in, such as the fact that corporations also run the schools now, and while they do teach the same basic skills, they also teach that their competitors are evil. The problem with the book is that Barry wants it to be a critique of laize-faire economic policy, but in the end he only takes bizzare situations and attaches corporate names to them. This is not enough for satire. Good satire hits you at home, where you live, and makes you think about the subject. Barry seems to be lobbing bombs in the general direction of where you live, with a few rare exceptions misses entirely. Only a climactic showdown in LA and the initial idea of murder as a marketing tool really work. Everything else will just make you smirk and shake your head. The other problem I had with the book, and this may not affect other readers, was that as a piece of speculative fiction it is poorly done. Barry describes a world that is not the future, but more of an alternate universe, where everything went of track decades ago. Probably, to those whom the book appeals to most, during the Reagan years. There are mentions of the JFK assasination, and the year 1996, and with the general lack of technological innovation, I would say that it takes place in 2003, but a different 2003. However, there is no real backstory on how it got this way. For a reader like me, this is troubling. Allusions are made to a past in which the government taxed things and had an actual military of it's own, and the EU exists in this world, but why and how it changed aren't addressed. Barry would have been better off setting his novel 50 years from now in our reality. The impact would have been greater. Characterization is also not one of Barry's strong points. Only Jennifer Government is a developed character, and she is still mostly a cipher. John Nike is a cookie-cutout villan, and Hack Nike and Billy NRA are mostly ghosts. It's as if Barry used all his creative juice on the premise, and then put it on autopilot. Jennifer Government will likely sell well, as it's marketing campaign ("Catch-22 by way of The Matrix") will appeal to any inteligent reader who enjoys satire. The marketing itself is either a massive case of hypocrisy or a clever bit of intended irony. Nevertheless, the book fails to deliver what it promises. It tells a good story, but it lives in an empty world.
Rating:
Summary: Worth the wait!
Review: I absolutely loved "Syrup" by Max Barry and so I was hanging out for the next one. "Jennifer Government" was worth the wait. Fast, funny and smart. If you're still not convinced, go to Max's website at www.....com and you can read the first chapter!
Rating: 
Summary: A big disappointment
Review: This is the most disappointing book I've read in a long time. Based on the premise, and the news about Soderbergh optioning the book long before publication, I thought there'd be something here -- something smart, entertaining, current. But from the first few pages it was clear that Barry wasn't up to his set-up. What might have been faintly realistic/scary in an udpated Orwell/Huxley kind of way, is simply stupid: goofy and barely thought-out. And it only gets worse from there as Barry tries to orchestrate the launch of a sneaker into something on the scale of WWIII, aiming I guess for satire a la Heller or even Palahniuk, but achieving something that more closely approximates the plotting of a painfully bad Hollywood disaster -- Titanic, say, but without a big ship to sink. And ultimately, it seems, Barry has nothing at all to say, and worse than that, he's not an especially funny or sensitive writer, and one with little sense of suspense or feeling for his characters. What's so disappointing about all this, more disappointing than it might be in your average really bad novel, is that this book is supposed to be an entertaining critique of the triumph of marketing,akin to NO LOGO & Adbusters, but what it really feels like is a shallow, inept, purely commercial, content-free product desperately pandering to a younger generation of readers, and so armed with a relatively fancy marketing campaign. Nothing against the marketing campaign really -- more books should have them, good books -- but it's disturbingly ironic when attached to this book in particular. And the publisher comparing it to everything from Catch-22 to the Matrix is simply offensive. This has all turned into a wordy rant, for which I apologize, but I'm left mystified as to why this thing got published at all -- it simply doesn't deliver in any kind of satisfying way, like the worst kind of aforementioned Hollywood disaster. If you want to read a smart & entertaining novel that involves marketing and branding and the world we live in, try William Gibson's latest, PATTERN RECOGNITION. It's everything this book might have wanted to be, if it were smart enough.
Rating:
Summary: Superbly entertaining!
Review: Max Barry's second novel, JENNIFER GOVERNMENT, is a wild ride through the near future, when American consumerism and culture have consolidated much of the world under a single government. People name themselves after the company they work for, and the unemployed are easily identifiable by their lack of surnames. The novel opens with a bang when a lowly merchandiser, Hack Nike, gets off the elevator on the wrong floor and meets two men, both named John Nike, at the water cooler. Hack is offered a guerilla marketing position and eagerly signs his contract before he realizes he has agreed to assassinate ten people as a way of boosting Nike's profits. Meanwhile, a savvy and ambitious government agent, Jennifer Government gets wind of the plans. To reveal more of what happens would be to ruin Max Barry's rambunctious plot, which bends and folds and ties itself in knots as the action heats up, involving the CEO's of other American corporations, the NRA, a disillusioned stockbroker, and a computer hacker named Violet ExxonMobil. Although not as hilarious as Barry's first novel SYRUP, Barry's instinct for the absurd remains intact as he serves up his zany vision of a world run amuck. The pacing is flawless, never letting up, always leaping ahead with new surprises, although near the end these constant turns of plot left me confused about where a particular character was, what he knew, who he knew and how. Except during one heavy-handed scene near the end, Barry breezes his readers through the insanity of his futuristic world with skill and confidence. Max Barry fans won't want to miss this novel. This is an entertaining satire best read in a few sittings. You won't find any deep insights here, but you will certainly get a few laughs and a sharp-eyed look at America's consumerism.
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