Jennifer Government

One of the special pleasures of the Harry Potter stories is their send-up of modern consumer culture--from Bertie Botts´ Every Flavour Beans (and they do mean every flavor) to Chocolate Frogs, which come complete with a collectible card featuring a celebrity witch or wizard. Potter´s creator, J.K. Rowling, pokes fun at contemporary marketing and advertising with tongue-in-cheek warmth that manages to make her simultaneously attractive to Madison Avenue and the rest of us--a remarkable achievement. Max Barry´s Jennifer Government, the satirical successor to his well-received first novel Syrup, takes a different angle on the consumer-marketing-gone-mad theme.