Jennifer Government by Max Barry

I finished reading Jennifer Government the weekend before last, but haven't gotten around to writing it up until now. Things have been crazy, but here we are now.

Jennifer Government is an insightful, trenchant, and hilarious look at globalism and corporatism run amok. In the world of Jennifer Government no one has family last names anymore. Your last name is the name of the company you work for. So we have characters such as Nathaniel ExxonMobil, John Nike, Billy NRA, and the eponymous Jennifer Government. As you can tell from Billy NRA, even the NRA is a company for hire. Even worse, the Police are for hire. You can even subcontract them as hit men. Children's last names are the sponsor of the school they go to. Jennifer's daughter Kate goes to a Mattel school (instead of Hasbro or some other toy company) so her name isn't Kate Government, it's Kate Mattel.

Without spoiling too much (and there's quite a bit to spoil), the book sets up around a marketing ploy gone awry. Nike's new Mercury shoes are going to be the huge consumer item of the quarter. People are gathering in huge crowds outside of Nike Towns all across the world to get a crack at these shoes (I can't remember the figure, but $5000 per pair seems right). In order to make them even more valuable, two Nike marketing execs come up with an idea to kill some teenagers that just bought the shoes to make it look like they were killed for their new Nikes. Thus, the new shoes will gather even more cachet because it looks like people will kill to get them. As if that isn't weird enough, soon we see Nike trying to abolish the government!

In short, Max Barry's book, while funny, and ostensibly light reading, makes you think about how your choices are manipulated by companies every day. It also makes you think about what the proper relationship between the government and business should be. Good book.