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Jennifer Government

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Jennifer Government

By: Max Barry
Narrated by: Michael Kramer
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About this listen

 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.©2003 Max Barry; (P)2003 Books on Tape, Inc. Dystopian Fiction Genre Fiction Literature & Fiction Political Satire Science Fiction Comedy Witty Funny

Critic Reviews

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

“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

 “May be the most fun you’ll find in a bookstore this year. . . . Full of wit, humor and imagination, Jennifer Government ultimately pulls off its over-the-top conceit.”—Time Out New York

“A riotous satirical rant. . . . [Its characters’] excesses . . . make Barry’s world of unregulated corporate greed and unrelenting consumerism so frightening and funny.”—Entertainment Weekly

“The plot rockets forward on hyperdrive . . . fresh and very clever.”—The Boston Globe

 “[A] devilish satire that made me laugh out loud.”—Dick Adler, The Chicago Tribune
All stars
Most relevant
The other reviews are pretty harsh, I enjoyed this book quite a lot

Hilarious, entertaining, interesting world and fun characters, tied together in a fast moving story

I roll my eyes pretty easily at a lot of cliché dystopian tropes but because the book doesn’t take itself too seriously it manages to avoid that fate

I also enjoyed how although the entire thing is a scathing portrait of extreme capitalism, it equally takes the piss out of the activist side of things too.

Yes, the only 2 Asian characters had horrendous voice acting, but it was less than 1% of the book and really wasn’t a dealbreaker, narrators turn me off very quickly and I actually quite enjoyed this one

Good clean fun

Actually very entertaining

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The story was rushed and forced a "it all ended happily every after" ending on the readers. A solid start but a disappointing ending and confusing progression. The narrator appears to attempt accents for each character that blend into one another (e.g texan guy sounds like a mutated bogan australian at times and a redneck at others) or an arguably racist accent (if Japan is part of the American Nations, and American is a standard accent spoken, why does the ONLY JAPANESE CHARACTER WITH LINES speak with a stereotypically bad (think a white person impersonating a japanese person) accent? It makes no sense.

Rushed Story w Cringy/Arguably Racist Accents

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fragmented catastrophe
good descriptive writing
better as a film
have up, as too exhausting to follow

maybe better as a movie

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