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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

 The irreverent author of the cult classic Syrup hits his target in this satire on the wages of big capital. In Max Barry's hilarious vision of the near future, the world is run by giant American corporations, and employees take the last names of the companies they work for; The Police and The NRA are publicly traded security firms, and the U.S. government may only investigate crimes if they can bill a citizen directly. When lowly Merchandising Officer Hack Nike unwittingly signs a contract that involves shooting teenagers to build up street credibility for Nike's new line of $2,500 sneakers, he goes to The Police, only to be pursued by Jennifer Government, a tough-talking agent with a bar-code tattoo under her eye, the consumer watchdog from hell.©2003 Max Barry (P)2003 Books on Tape, Inc. Dystopian Fiction Genre Fiction Literature & Fiction Political Satire Science Fiction Comedy Witty Funny

Critic Reviews

Selected for School Library Journal Adult Books for Young Adults

"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 Review)
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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