Jennifer Government

By Max Barry

A wickedly satirical and outrageous thriller about globalization and marketing hype, Jennifer Government is the best novel in the world ever.

"Funny and clever.... A kind of ad-world version of Dr. Strangelove.... [Barry] unleashes enough wit and surprise to make his story a total blast." --The New York Times Book Review

"Wicked and wonderful.... [It] does just about everything right.... Fast-moving, funny, involving." --The Washington Post Book World

Taxation has been abolished, the government has been privatized, and employees take the surname of the company they work for. It's a brave new corporate world, but you don't want to be caught without a platinum credit card--as lowly Merchandising Officer Hack Nike is about to find out. Trapped into building street cred for a new line of $2500 sneakers by shooting customers, Hack attracts the barcode-tattooed eye of the legendary Jennifer Government. A stressed-out single mom, corporate watchdog, and government agent who has to rustle up funding before she's allowed to fight crime, Jennifer Government is holding a closing down sale--and everything must go.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jan 6, 2004
• ISBN: 9781400076345

Max Barry

Max Barry began removing parts at an early age. In 1999, he successfully excised a steady job at tech giant HP in order to upgrade to the more compatible alternative of manufacturing fiction. While producing three novels, he developed the online nation simulation game NationStates, as well as contributing to various open source software projects and developing religious views on operating systems. He did not leave the house much. For Machine Man, Max wrote a website to deliver pages of fiction to readers via e-mail and RSS. He lives in Melbourne, Australia, with his wife and two daughters, and is thirty-eight years old. He uses vi. www.maxbarry.com

Reviews for Jennifer Government

[dlash-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Good idea, but never really reached potential.

[beckyjg · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In the future no one will want to pay taxes to support the government. Everyone will want all services to be privatized, and they will wear corporate logos to show their brand loyalty. In the future everyone will be a consumer and everything will be a product. In the future there will be artificially created runs on must-have products, and people will be willing to spend outrageously inflated amounts of money on such trivial items as sneakers and molded plastic dolls.Hey. Wait a minute. That sounds suspiciously like the present.In the not-so-distant future of Max Barry's Jennifer Government multi-national corporations run society. The geo-politico-economic world consists mostly of the United States and its federated economic blocs--Central and South America, the U.K., Russia, Australia and New Zealand, a wee bit of Africa and some of Asia; the non-United States economic blocs--the European Union, some of Asia; and what's left of the rest of the world consists of fragmented markets. The Police, a publicly traded securities firm with a theme song ("Every Breath You Take") that plays on a loop in the lobby, will take up your case for a fee. The Government still exists, and even retains some ideals, such as a belief in basic human rights and the greater good, but is stymied by the fee-based system upon which it runs. Employees like Jennifer Government, derive their surnames from the entity that employs them. No job? No last name.Jennifer Government--who has her own very good reasons for questioning the corporate structure of society, although they won't be revealed until late in the action--has been assigned to stop several killings at the Nike Town in a local mall. The killings are part of a guerrilla marketing plan designed to heighten interest in the new Nike Mercury. (Although the Government has to charge citizens who've been victims for any investigations conducted into the crime against them, it does have a small budget for the prevention of crime.) Hack Nike, the low level Nike employee to whom the assignment had been given subcontracted it to the Police, who sub-subcontracted it to the NRA, another publicly traded securities firm which consists of a lot of bad-ass dudes. Jennifer Government fails to prevent the crime; the NRA kills fourteen kids instead of the assigned ten, and shoots Jennifer Government in the process.Boy is she pissed. Jennifer's movements--sometimes officially sanctioned and sometimes not, for she's a bit of a maverick--take her from Melbourne to London to Los Angeles, as she tracks John Nike, the architect of the guerrilla marketing campaign, an increasingly powerful and increasingly nefarious executive. Side plots which follow a loose group of anti-corporate guerrillas, a narcissistic computer hacker, and a suicidal stock broker all come together pretty neatly by novel's end.Jennifer Government is a good, capably written, often funny, and always thought-provoking dystopian novel. Definitely recommended as a quick, fun read. And don't worry--the meaning of the bar code tattoo is indeed revealed.

[faintdreams_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Funny satire on consumerism and also a competent murder mysetery

[david_brown_851454 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I had marked another of Barry's novels to read some time ago and never gotten around to it, and the premise of this book was even more compelling. I'm generally a fan of dystopian science fiction, though, so this was almost guaranteed to be an enjoyable read. Still Jennifer Government provides a compelling...and extremely timely...story.

The setting is a near future in which America has overtaken a number of other countries and thus spread the dominance of a handful of major corporations through most of the world. Taxes in American countries are no more, and an impotent government that relies on fundraising struggles to police the law against corporate forces, such as the ubiquitous NRA, which have the freedom to do whatever they like in pursuit of profit, including murder. In this future, people are born with no last names. Their identity is entirely associated with the corporation for which they work, and they take on the company's name as their last name upon employment. Children take on the last name of the corporation sponsoring the school which they attend. Being un-employed, or self-employed, leaves one with no name, no identity. One's life is entirely dependent upon being consumed by a corporation.

I should point out that, while dystopian, this is a comedy, and Barry's dry wit is present throughout the story. Characters, such as Billy NRA, find themselves in outright hysterical situations that leave the reader laughing while unable to escape the nagging through-line woven into the setting of every scene.

Not that the through-line is at all subtle. And, as comedic are the scenarios in which our characters find themselves, the development and internal lives of the characters are often flat, and certainly secondary to the story. The point of this novel isn't the characters, nor is it so much the plot, but rather the world which is its setting, and, while this sounds as though it would be completely dysfunctional and without any chance of working, it keeps the reader turning the pages with a surprising amount of engagement.

Barry's writing style is quick, overly abrupt in places, and this is one of the most prominent criticisms that I've read in other reviews. As this is the first of his work that I've read, I can't speak to whether or not this is his writing style, but it seems as though it's a device in itself to place the reader into this comically frightening world.

Many would discard this novel as an anti-capitalist diatribe, but doing so misses something deeper going on here. The future in which Barry places his reader is one in which there is no room for thinking against conventional wisdom. Critical thought has been over-run by marketing. Taking time to think, or to live or care for one's loved ones, means that one is not being productive in one's employment. Propaganda rules, and different ways of thinking are not tolerated. In its absolute freedom, society has paradoxically given up its soul.

This is a light and quick read, but one that will continue stay present in your mind, and in your perception, in troubling ways long after you've finished laughing your way through its pages. Considering the climate in which we live, the setting of this novel, which becomes its own character in many ways, is a warning not only of what is to come, but of what has already arrived. While a bit heavy-handed at times, this is still a worthwhile read for anyone who would like to have their thoughts provoked.

[cephas730 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A unique work of fiction of corporate America run amok. It was a fun read.

[keyboardscoffee · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Novels like this scare me. Mostly because I could totally see this happening and THAT scares me.

Consumerism has taken over society and each company essentially belongs to two umbrella companies. It’s like the Pepsi and Coke debate taken to extremes. They go as far as giving you rewards for giving up your other loyalty card! You take the last name of your employer, so if you switch jobs, you switch names. The basis of the plot is Nike trying to promote $2,500 shoes (SHOES!!!) that teenagers are taking out loans to buy. I’m hoping all of this shows you exactly how much control consumerism has on people in Jennifer Government.

Normally I’m not a huge fan of so many narrators telling a story but it worked extremely well here. Especially because the stories all overlap. But not in the way where you hear the same story from different points, which I hate. Each story quickly connects with the others for small moments, weaving everything together nicely.

The only plotline I had issues following was the NGA (National Gun Association I think. I’m too lazy to look back and see ;). I followed it for a bit, then the story followed the other narrators for a bit, and by the time it came back to this one, I had completely forgotten it was part of the story. I didn’t even remember the character name. It was kind of eh :/ the rest of the way through.

I did like how each character had their own personalities and distinct motives for what was going on. Some of those were good motives, some of them bad, but they matched each character well. And other than the NGA plotline, I never confused them.

Overall, it wasn’t too bad of a read. Again, a little scary since I can see society being like this in the future. Maybe not to this extreme, but you never know.

Ps. In case you were wondering, there is a story behind Jennifer Government ‘s barcode tattoo. I giggled.

[cheryl_in_cc_nv · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Smart - as I first thought about it I paid the most attention to our kick-ass heroine and thought of it as a big step up from such fare as the Aisling Grey, demon-hunter novels. The world it portrays is almost plausible, and scary enough to be distinctly *not* funny imo. Otoh, a reader does have to suspend disbelief over a few implausibilities, too. And indeed it was a little too intense, too graphic, for my taste. All in all, I recommend it and will seek out other works by this author. But I won't say it's a must read because it's smart in a clever way, and I rate smart in a wise way more highly.

[ralphd00d-325171 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Wasn't my cup of tea, so to speak.

[lyrrael · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Dude, I totally got the point after about ten pages. Talk about beating a dead horse.

[fulner · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book was excellent for what it is. It is a novel of a "dystopian" future, almost a Communist Atlas Shrugged, where the government is so small people cannot tell which one of these guys is the US Government President. In many ways this "dystopia" really is a libertarian paradise. Some things are a little unbelievable, like everyone having to take the last name not of their family, but of the corporation they work for, and IBM being the leader in home computers by out rewards pointing Apple, and evidentially the only religion that still exists in the LDS church, but all in all its a good laugh more than anything else. In the end, however, it may be a sign that we should have listened to the Anarchists...Highly recommended whether you agree with the socialist author, that capitalism will ruin the world if left to continue as it has, or you agree with me, that government will ruin the world if the market isn't allowed to work, or you happen to agree with most of the world that says we're screwed anyway.

[kvrfan9 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I don't know if Max Berry thinks much about the Tea Party. I don't even know if he's aware the Tea Party exists. Barry, after all, is Australian. But the world he posits in "Jennifer Government" is one in which the Tea Party's dreams have come true. All taxes have been abolished. The government has shrunk to such a size that it could probably be (in Grover Norquist's famous phrase) "drowned in a bathtub." But in a complex society, something must rush into the power vacuum and establish order--and those things have been the multinational corporations. Indeed, war isn't waged between nations anymore, but between business alliances; and employed to provide the "muscle" is the National Rifle Association. Ordinary citizens have come to identify so with corporate identity that they have surrendered individual identity--their last names simply adopt that of the corporation they work for (e.g. "John Nike," "Hayley McDonald's").

Yet "Jennifer Government" is not written as a somber alternative "Brave New World." Instead, it is rollicking satire. It's a fun read. The plot careens, and I was always eager to turn the page to find out what twist was to happen next.

Still, I found myself wishing the book could be written better. I suppose that in such an obvious satire, a reader shouldn't expect the characters to be much more than caricatures, but they all seemed to be a bit too simple-minded for me. Much of the prose possessed a similar simple-mindedness. For instance, what is one to do with a sentence like this: "The sky drizzled light rain"? What other kind of rain could it drizzle?

Still, it was an entertaining read to fill a few evenings.

[susandennis-139327 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This hilarious look at the near future has the world run by corporations pretty much. Except for rogue nations like France who still have to pay taxes. Berry offers up no solutions, just a wild romp through 'what if'. Really fun read.

[dlmorrese · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Welcome to Max Barry’s corporate utopia. An alternate world where economic competition rules, where almost every government service is privatized, where corporations operate unfettered by laws or regulations to protect employees or consumers, and where government cannot even investigate a murder unless the victims’ families are willing and able to fund it. It is an almost feudal system in which companies form alliances to gain market share and undermine their competition (to include armed assaults), and where the population is fiercely loyal to their chosen brands.

This is the setting for ‘Jennifer Government.’ Despite the premise, which seems almost too possible at times, it is not as frightening or thought provoking as it could be. You don’t get the feeling that this really could happen, mainly because it lacks a lot of the set up and backstory for how such a system could have come about, and it only superficially examines the consequences of privatizing basic services, and leaving corporations, whose primary, if not sole motivation is making a quick buck, completely unregulated. The characters are not especially well developed and it is hard to empathize with them. The antagonist, Jake Nike, is pure evil with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, making him almost too cartoonish to take seriously.

This might do better as an action packed comic book or ‘graphic novel’ but it is still worth reading because the premise. The prose is adequate and although the characters are not engaging, they are serviceable.

[yougotamber · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The characters life's are very cleverly interwoven. It's complicated, clever yet easy to follow. I am very impressed with the clear creativity Max Barry holds in his imagination. I can't wait to read another of his books. The story itself reminded me a little of the movie, "Idiocracy", it could very well be the story that fills the time frame between now and then.

[eyejaybee · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Well, I suppose some people might find this amusing, but I simply found it irritating.The basic premise had a kernel of humour, but not enough to sustain a whole novel. This might have worked as a short (preferably very short) story, but extended to full novel length it just fell flat. It was rather like watching a school's end of year revue which just seems to go on and on forever, with the performers rocking with laughter at the cliquey in-jokes while the members of the audience try to look polite while hoping for the fire alarm to go off, calling an early halt to proceedings.

[crazybatcow · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It is quite convoluted and sometimes I had to pause to figure out which character was involved with what sub-theme. It's not that their names were similar, but there are a lot of characters and it seems each chapter is about a different one... so you'll read a chapter about Buy, then he won't pop back into the story until 4 chapters later so when he does you'll have to pause to figure what his "thread" was in the book.It is not even close to the density of Catch 22 - way more light-hearted and mocking.It's not really "funny" and I'd be surprised if anyone laughed while reading it, but it does have some interesting insights into how commercialism might end up controlling our world (we're already subject to whims and fads that have no basis in "reality"... it might not be as extreme as in this book, but...)As a message on how the be-all and end-all is financial, I don't think it's very far off the mark. Nearly anyone would do nearly anything if it meant they'd be rich... and anyone who says otherwise isn't on a "career path" that would ever make them rich.

[fiberbabble_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I listened to the unabridged CD audio book. The back of the case says, in part, "Max Barry's hilarious vision of the near future...."

Well, not so much. I kept listening because the plotlines held the promise of something much more, but it just ended up being nine or more hours of my life that I won't get back. It's not that the book is bad, it's just that there's nothing funny in it. The employees taking the name of their employer is mildly amusing, but seriously...

The book had a lot of storylines that merged and veered; the elements were there to provide a big-bang ending, but it just kinda fizzled to an end.

[themythicalcodfish · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was the first of Max Barry's books that I read, and it took the top of my head right off. I loved every second, and reread it on a regular basis. Review is extracted from an academic analysis that I did of this book in conjunction with Gary Shteyngart's "Super Sad True Love Story"."In Max Barry’s “Jennifer Government”, the world in which we live has been changed to one centered completely around Federated Economic Blocs, with a weakened and decentralized government. As such, petty concerns such as insider trading are no longer relevant, and corporate espionage is taken care of with a defense contract from the National Rifle Association. Fast and accurate information communication is the key to everything, from the eventual success of Jennifer’s criminal investigations, to how the marketing executives she chases were able to get away with manipulating matters for so long. The social aspect of media and marketing is still very much an in-person experience, communicated through billboards, print ads, and, in this case, guerrilla marketing reminiscent of street crimes; what better way to raise the value of a new pair of sneakers than to hire someone to shoot the first five people who purchase them, and let the news leak that such killings have suddenly become common? The information that connects all of these events, and in the end leads to the mystery being solved and the marketing director behind the murders being caught, is a complex chain of emails, phone calls, stock prices, and computed viruses designed to take out neighboring corporations’ credit card systems. Information is more valuable than cash, and those who control what is known, by whom, and how, hold all the cards. Though this novel was written before the ascendancy of Facebook and the social media explosion, there is still a considerable amount of discussion of intellectual property, and of what information should be readily available, versus what should be guarded. The title character’s daughter, Katie, has a personal webpage from her school that sounds remarkably similar to a MySpace presence; another character, Violet uses this information to kidnap Katie, and is noted in the book as being incredulous at the level of information access that will later, in our world, become commonplace. Intellectual property and flawed contracts are referenced in a scene with Violet where she attempts to sell a computer virus for a corporation to use on their rival. Having failed to read her contract thoroughly, she finds herself bounced from one CEO’s office to another, involved in increasingly illegal activities, all the while with the promise of payment dangling before her, never to be fulfilled. While digital information is not the key player in this tale, it is an undeniable force, and throughout the novel there are hints towards the major social media shift that would arrive a few years later in the real world."In summation: read this, give it to everyone you know, especially those in information and marketing. And maybe hold off on buying those new sneakers for a couple of weeks. And maybe get rid of your credit cards.

[melydia_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In a world where capitalism is so prized that you take your employer as your last name, Hack Nike accidentally finds himself part of a marketing scheme to sell sneakers by killing customers. I suppose one could see this as a cautionary tale against over-privatization (the NRA is basically a bunch of guns for hire, schools are run by toy companies where new Barbies are part of the curriculum, etc.), but I was too amused by the absurdity of it all to take it too seriously. Jennifer Government is, as her name suggests, a government agent attempting to catch the people behind the sneaker shootings. At the same time, Hack’s somewhat unstable girlfriend Violet attempts to make a fortune selling a nasty new computer virus, stockbroker Buy Mitsui makes a random act of kindness that drives him to ponder suicide, and Billy Bechtel attempts to go on a skiing holiday and somehow ends up as a hired assassin. The whole thing is positively silly, but a lot of fun nonetheless. If you like satire in the vein of Catch-22, you’ll probably enjoy this one.

[library_bird · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Interesting look at how corporations might run the world if they didn't have to bother about so many laws. When the government can't tax and can only prevent crime, not persecute criminals (without obtaining funding to do so -- from the victims) it makes hunting down corporate soldiers somewhat difficult. I thought the book was fast-paced and had a nice array of characters.

[libra500 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Satirical humour, that works very well on it's own terms. The book has been optioned for a film by Stepen Soderbergh. The book would make a fantastic film plot - the author even talks in his notes about editing out a character. Not for everyone but right up my street.

[isabelx_21 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mercurys had sold as if they were religious artifacts, but for John the whole campaign had taken on a sour taste, thanks to Hack's inability to be a proper fall guy. Now he and his psychotic girlfriend had vanished, and it was only a matter of time, John was sure, before Jennifer Government came calling.This is the third book I've read recently (the others being "Snow Crash" and "The Paper Eater") where big business has more or less taken over running the world and the power of government has shrunk correspondingly. In this book, the major corporations are associated with two loyalty schemes, each of which is keen to suppress both the rival scheme and the remaining powers of the government.government.I've always been a bit of a dystopia fan, so this book was right up my street.

[grizzly9anderson · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Jennifer Government is the book equivalent of an early summer big action adventure movie that where Jean-Claude Van Damme or The Rock or somebody explains that "Too Much Capitalism Is Bad" with approximately the same degree of subtlety they bring to the rest of their acting.If you go in knowing that it you're getting an action thriller about capitalism run amok then you'll have a few hours of fun escapist reading. If you're looking for a thoughtful analysis of capitalism and greed, or a carefully plotted thriller mystery where the ending comes as any kind of surprise you'll be horribly disappointed.

[ideiosepius · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An ultimate sci-fi cyberpunk. More that anything a social commentary. I suspect that like Orwell in 1984 Barry was using future fiction to highlight present issues.

[auraesque · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The novel is a fast paced futuristic adventure. The characters are interesting and the plot a little too close to home. Overall a quick enjoyable read.

[kfschmid · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Poor execution of the interesting premise. Actually pretty terrible.

[seriousgrace · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Jennifer Government is fast paced and thrilling. Max Barry has everything from corporate greed, kidnapping, the NRA, and of course, murder. Set in the plausible near future there is a level of sexiness to the way Barry writes. He makes his characters move around each other in a cat and mouse manner, always flirting while outsmarting each other. In the center is Jennifer Government. She lives in a world where people take the place of their employment as their last names (Hack Nike and Jennifer Government and Billy NRA to name a few), 911 won't respond to emergencies unless the capability for payment can be established, and taxes are outlawed. Jennifer could be the next Laura Croft, fighting old demons and new crimes. So, when her daughter is kidnapped things get personal. But, that's the climax of the story. It all starts with Nike cooking up a marketing scheme to build of street cred for a new line of $2,500 sneakers by committing murder...

[slothman_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A satirical look at rampant capitalism in the classic “if this goes on” mode of science fiction. Barry’s tale takes place in a near future where all surnames in the United States Federated Economic Blocs are now corporate affiliations. The action starts when overly ambitious executives from Nike’s Guerrilla Marketing department decide to arrange murders over their most exclusive line of shoe as a publicity stunt, and this touches off a cascade of conflicts that escalate up to confrontations that could topple the government. Reviewers compare it to Catch-22; it does have a similar mix of madcap and grim. As cutthroat-capitalist futures go, this one is more lighthearted than Richard Morgan’s Market Forces, but the depiction of competition between McDonald’s and Burger King escalating into riots is still quite believable.

[trinitym82 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Good - dystopian novel that verges on not being young adult (mature themes like sex is implied, and kind of violent). Jennifer is an agent of the Government bent on stopping her ex husband from ruining the world. Corporations own people - schools are fun by corporations as well, and the U.S. owns other countries, like Australia. A marketing rep, John Nike, has ten people killed in order to generate interest in the newest brand of shoes. He hires out to an underling (Hack), who screws it up, and Jennifer gets wind of it and she's on his trail. Nike wants to go to war, literarlly, with the other organization of brands (team advantage vs u.s. alliance - kind of like wegmans cards vs price chopper cards) and he tries to get people to kill hte president - the NRA is the brand associated with US Alliance. Everything works out in the end, though. Jennifer has a daughter, who she ignores - kind of- in favor of her job as she tries to save the world. Buy, a stock broker, has a crisis, but is saved by Jennifer, and her daughter, who gives his life purpose. It shows what people are willing to do to b e successful, and the world is reasonably constructed.

[debnance_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Hack Nike (people in this future world take their last names from the company they work for) is ordered to kill people to increase demand for Nike sneakers.