Jennifer Government
by Max Berry
Published by Vintage
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Reviewed by Jeff Halpern
Imagine a future where your identity is so intimately connected to your employer that your surname is the company name. Imagine the U.S. has taken over most of the free world as satellite territories, the government has been privatized and police departments are reduced to searching for private funding to solve crime.
And imagine that every conceivable type of group--including the NRA--belongs to one of two rival credit card networks offering membership reward points. If you can imagine all this, you have entered the world of Jennifer Government.
In Australia (now a U.S. territory), Hack Nike, a low-level clerk just trying to get ahead in life, has been contracted to execute a sneaker promotion that ultimately leaves 14 people in a local shopping mall dead and Jennifer Government hot on his tracks.
This is a world of corporate politics gone wild--a world that Hack is ill equipped to handle, and for reasons as yet unknown, single-mom and bar-code tattooed Jennifer walked away from years ago.
Why Jennifer is hell-bent on bringing down John Nike, the ruthless marketing manager who duped Hack, serves as the basis of this fast-paced satire Berry intricately weaves.
If you can imagine a world where excessive marketing hype and corporate greed rule the day, then you're ready to jump right in to this global corporate-based asylum.
Armchair Interviews says: It's a fun fast-paced read that will leave you shaking your head saying, what if?