Jack WomackReviews

The trouble with reading dystopian fiction all the time is that bad dystopias are annoying, good dystopias are depressing, and excellent dystopias are devastating. This is the third kind. ‘Random Acts of Senseless Violence’ tells the story of America’s implosion in the brilliantly immediate format of a tweenager’s diary. The writer is plunged straight into the life of Lola, a twelve year old girl living with her parents and younger sister in New York. The way that total social breakdown plays out in the background of her daily doings is nothing short of brilliant. The world-building through teenage slang is cleverly done and has aged well. The language unerringly walks the line between otherness and comprehensibility; the pacing is relentless and absolutely compelling.

Even though I wanted to read something more cheering, I could not put this novel down. A major part of this was emotional investment in Lola, who is a heart-breaking and unforgettable character. It's genuinely distressing to be periodically reminded that she and her friends are only twelve. She is old before her time, clear-eyed and pragmatic. When her parents try to reassure her that everything is going to be fine, she knows immediately that they’re lying and it isn’t. Indeed, she feels a strong sense of responsibility and protectiveness towards her parents and sister. Yet she is also preoccupied with school work and friendships.

I won’t spoil the events of the book, merely comment that they are told in an unusually vivid fashion. First person narration is challenging to get right, but when done well it can be uniquely involving. (Examples from my favourite novels shelf include [b:The Kindly Ones|3755250|The Kindly Ones|Jonathan Littell|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347999215s/3755250.jpg|2916549] and [b:The Goldfinch|17333223|The Goldfinch|Donna Tartt|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1451554970s/17333223.jpg|24065147].) Political instability, economic collapse, and the escalation of violence are recounted subtly, woven into the fabric of Lola’s daily life. The narrative has a level of emotional conviction that lends it disturbing plausibility. That said, a few years ago I wouldn’t have considered this scenario of total social implosion in the US at all likely to occur. Yet here we are.

The significance of the title is that the book shows why senseless violence is not random. Violence is systemic and its apparent senselessness conceals personal and social causes. I am incredibly impressed with the nuanced analysis of social breakdown that is concealed in the format of a twelve year old’s diary, somehow without Lola becoming a precocious caricature. I won’t soon forget this novel or its narrator. Pity about the lurid cover design, though.

Read this
Highly

Womack was recommended to me as being a good writer, and this is the first book of his I've attempted, so I can only imagine that it must not be one of his better books. An alternate-universe, alternate-history, cyberpunk-themed book in which the protagonists often talk in a dreary newspeak and in which, despite reaching near the top in a corporate hell, they are too stupid to realize that they are being taken advantage of in ways that the reader notices immediately. I can see that Womack has talent, but this book, despite occasional moments in which he shows what he can do, is a failure.

By far the best of Womack's dystopian NYC novels. This one is less SF than the others, and is focused entirely on the misfortunes of a teenage girl whose parents fall on hard times. An excellent, very believable urban drama.

What a great book, a near future telling of the demise of US society told through the eyes of a young girl. Moving, gripping and thought provoking, I loved every page.

This book encapsulates the transition from running an "honest" business under corrupt communism to running an "honest" business under a corrupt post-Soviet gangster oligarchy. Although the events of the book take place over just a few months, they describe the rise of the gangster class that birthed Putin. Like all good satire, the utter absurdity of it reveals a lot of truths.

Max is a wealthy businessman. He runs a document forgery business - an essential service in Russia's bureaucratic system. He is happily married, although the relationship with his wife is tense. He also has a young mistress, who is married to another businessman. His mistress's husband hires him for a huge forgery project to cover up his past involvement in a scandal (his company took government money to build a railroad, pocketed the money, never built the railroad, and pretended it had been built) so that he can impress potential partners in a new business venture. Max finds himself drawn into this new business venture against his wishes, and has to risk his life dealing with gangsters.

The author is not Russian, and in some ways this is very obvious (for instance, he sticks to the same nickname for each character throughout the whole book, which makes it so much easier for non-Russians to read), but it also seems to perfectly capture Russian black humor and twisted relationship with reality.

This is an engaging thriller. It can be gory (you can't really write about Russian gangsters without a torture scene or too). The humor is rarely in the form of outright jokes (except for the scenes where Max's brother is planning a theme park called Sovietland that will allow American tourists to enjoy the full Soviet experience, including secret police interrogations and the gulag), but instead relies on the normalization of utterly ridiculous situations (going to a sauna, getting drunk on vodka because there's no socially acceptable way to not drink as much as the naked gangster next to you, then just casually walking away after someone comes in and shoots everyone in the sauna). Everything in the book is totally over-the-top without ever feeling totally implausible.

Following the trend so easy to see for all of us who lived through the early 1990's, this book takes everything we experienced and amped it up to a fever pitch.

Womack takes all the increasing poverty, the general decline across the board, the massive riots, unrest and all the various drugs making it into every home (including prescription abuse), and tops it with violence on a very scary and down-to-earth scale.

It works so well here in this novel. The gentle diary of a 12-year-old girl in a money-troubled middle-class house slides step by step into chaos. It's so easy to get lost in her everyday concerns, but just like the proverbial frog in the stovepot, it's a cinch to get boiled in the end. :)

From being hounded by true asshole collectors, to moving to a rougher neighborhood, to being ostracized by her old friends, to getting involved in street gangs, this is one hell of a frightening tale. It's just normal life. Twisted inexorably to a dark fate.

And this isn't some novel about one single example. The whole world is going to shit. The riots continue much farther than what we saw. Presidents were mauled by angry mobs. Poverty is rampant everywhere.

The slide is not so quick that people don't TRY to hold it all together. But the slide happens despite everything and this made the book one hell of a horrific read. There's no way out. Anywhere.

Goodbye, normalcy. This SF is a supremely understated sociological SF that instead relies on great characters with great personalities driven into ever-increasing bad circumstances. As an idea novel, it's pretty damn brilliant, but as a dark realistic horror, it's even better.

Very worth the read. Scary.

I wouldn't say Jack Womack is a great writer, but he is certainly an interesting one. There are certain technical weaknesses in the books of his which I've read so far, but at the same time these problems are not what I remember. And I do remember. Jack Womack novels stick with me. I remember them in much more detail than usual, and I'm not sure why. At the very least, the not knowing is interesting.

While there is lots to like, it's the ending of this particular book that's the big payoff. If a more naturalistic iteration of Philip K. Dick sounds like something that appeals to you, I heartily recommend.
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Also: if you've ever read *A Clockwork Orange* and liked it, I recommend Womack's *Random Acts of Senseless Violence* in the strongest possible terms. In fact, read that first.

This is a very uncomfortable, but very rewarding read. More over at my blog.

Brilliant! Ambient is a 1987 (publication date) update of A Clockwork Orange with some additional ultraviolence and a new language thrown in. The author even pays tribute to A Clockwork Orange early in the book.

In this book, we follow O'Malley, a bodyguard for a dysfunctional CEO of a major company in a 21st century dystopian New York City. Avalon is Mister Dryden, his boss's, mistress/concubine. She's very young and very hot and has a thing for wigs. And O'Malley is in love with her.

O'Malley has another side to him. His sister is an "ambient," or a genetically modified mutant living amongst each other who have their own language-within-a-language and who tend to be pretty violent. But hey, everyone in this book is violent. Rapes, muggings, murders, etc., are commonly seen and passed on by. O'Malley lives with Enid, his sister, in a run down nightmare of a place where no sane non-ambient would go. He's accepted there because of her. Oh, and in addition to naturally occurring mutants, there are those who wish to join them and become ambients. Enid is one of these. She's 6'3" tall and has spikes sticking out of her head, pointed sides out. She's also had her breasts cut off. She has a girlfriend who's a psychopathic midget. Normal, right?

The army is fighting another army on Long Island and boys are being chewed up left and right. It's your duty to serve, unless you can get a sweet gig like O'Malley has. The army boys are always shooting at people, into crowds, on buses and trains, raping girls in the streets -- they're insane.

Meanwhile, Mister Dryden's father, who worships Elvis, owns the corporation and seems to be wanting to re-take control of what he's given his son. He views his son as unstable. His son views him as unstable. Something's got to give, right? Well, Mister Dryden convinces O'Malley to put a bomb under his father's desk next time they're visiting his estate, so he does. And he and Avalon finally hook up. Mister Dryden tells O'Malley he'll have to get out of the country for awhile until the coast is clear, so he makes plans to do so. He and Avalon decide to go together, so after the bomb is set, they take off. And encounter some problems. People are out to get them. But why? Turns out Avalon knew about the plan, knew where the bomb was and went into the office and changed the time for it to go off when both Mister Dryden AND his father would be in there. However, they don't know if it went off, or if it did, if the men were in there. So, they don't know if there's a manhunt on for them or not. And apparently there is.

O'Malley takes Avalon to his place in the Ambient part of town to hide out. The next morning, there's a car outside, waiting. So they take off. And a chase ensues. They wind up down in the subway tunnels and come across a religious service the ambients are having, who do not like being interrupted. Just as they're about to be killed, Enid intervenes and saves their hides. She and her girlfriend then take them through the sewers to a safe house. Tired, they fall asleep. When O'Malley wakes, he finds Avalon gone with a left for him note saying, "You're next." He's both frightened and livid. He figures Mister Dryden has done it, so he goes after him. Then he goes after his father. He's introduced to Alice, a monster computer that knows just about everything and is reunited with Avalon, who appears to have betrayed him to Mister Dryden's father. He can't believe it. And then ... what? Do you actually think I'm going to tell you the ending? No way! It's a great book and you'll have to get it and read it and find out for yourself what happens. Apparently, this book is part of a series, perhaps the first one. If so, I want the others. It's kind of cyberpunk, but not really. It's kind of sci fi, but more just dystopian, so if you want to classify that as sci fi, have at it. It was a hard book to read because of all of the violence, and I've seen and read more than my fair share. At some times, it felt like a nightmare. I was honestly glad when it was over and I had finished. But I loved it. It was really original and really awesome. The characters were great, the plot was great, the dialogue was insane. Good stuff. Five stars. Strongly recommended, if you can stomach it.

I am a sucker for good titles, I admit. This one was in a list I saw: http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2014/mar/10/top-10-books-read-af....
The book started interestingly enough, but unfortunately did not develop. I was rather disappointed, I admit. At least one whole star goes to the author for his rather painstaking idea to change the way Lola talks, in a gruesome kind of crescendo, as her life changes from a relatively protected childhood. It does not sound like it, but I think it was generally a good idea. I hope it was with deliberation that she ended up sounding so out of place, desperately trying to belong in her new... hood.

Hm, which is worse? The device of an upper east-side teen girl's diary? The b otched wanna-be street-smart slang when hard times for her Hollywood script writing father evict the family to Harlem? Or the endless repetition of non-developing plot points that stretch a flimsy short story into a novel-length snore?

Nah, it's gotta be the payola reviews on the back cover, herniating themselves to tell me Womack is comparable to Gibson and Hoban. What money or bedfellows this guy must have.

My impressions upon reading this book in 1990. Many, many spoilers follow.

Given the strange argot this book is written in, it’s obvious Womack saw A Clockwork Orange one too many times. The book’s dialect is quite similar.

This book was interesting and good. At times it was not detailed enough. (This may be unfair since I have not read other books in the series. Dryco, the (to use Bruce Sterling’s cover blurb words) “sinister multinational cabal”, is not explained much at all. It seems to be amorally apolitical and subordinate both Russian and the U.S. to its wishes via trade. Drasnaya seems to be its Russian equivalent; a corporation dedicated to ruthlessly enforcing the edicts of “sozializtkapitalism” a system of forced consumption in Russia -- of Sov goods with the morbid touch of Stalin, the Big Boy, being the ultimate consumer icon.

A war fought between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. and its surrogates all over the world, including around New York City, is very important in the lives of the characters.

Womack does throw in neat stuff: parallel universe travel via Telsa technology, Fortean events the results of travel between time tracks, an alternate universe where Lincoln was shot before he freed the slaves (Teddy Roosevelt did) and Franklin Delano Roosevelt dies before instituting the New Deal -- a universe where time flows at a different rate than in ours and catacylisms in our universe (like the Tunguska event and the first A-Bomb explosions) influence events in other time tracks. These include a plague brought back with the American Siberian Expeditionary force, Huey Long making an appearance as does a slave owning Coca-Cola Company which brands its human property.
Womack brings us two worlds of grimness, sorrow, and despair.

But what makes the book memorable, where Womack really shines, is in the creation of characters. There is the narrator, Robert Luther Biggerstaff, grim, sorrowful ex-soldier. Jake, psychopathic, yet honorable killer, capable of love who we see constantly hooked into the anguished tunes of a dead, obscure jazz singer. His only act of love kills the protean genius of supergirl Oktobriana Dmitrievna Osipova. “Good intentions always killed ... “ remarks Luther. Jake finds that out in his odd, brief, intense relationship with Oktobriana. Her death is poignant. We meet her brilliant, but politically stupid ex-boyfriend who travels to an alternate universe to bring back his hero Josef Stalin. There is the forger Cedric who develops a homosexual obsession for Luther. There is Wanda Quarles and her life of pain, some hidden from her husband. He is Norman Quarles, self-taught doctor and Womack’s greatest creation.

In him, Womack condenses the pain of his world and cleverly uses, in the guise of this self-taught doctor, the conventions, naivete, and innocence of the sf reader for the future. Quales sees a beautiful future of the ‘30s pulp magazines. He plies Luther with questions about the future. Luther simply replies that the future always disappoints. Womack cleverly uses the 1930 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York as the icon of Quales’ future faith. It is the same (well, almost) as the touchstone World Fair that inspired so many sf wonderous tales of tomorrow and writers like Fred Pohl. Quales’ imprisonment in a violent world that he naivelly, in a way a sf fan can empathize and sympathize with oh-so-well, believes will become wonderously better is supremely poignant especially for the sf reader. I felt the bite of Quales death acutely.

Womack’s tale is violent, sad, grim, and moving.

William Gibson is continually extolling, in his blog, the excellence of the fiction by his friend, one Jack Womack. And bloody hell, if he isn't right. Damn straight. Where Gibson excells in the poetry of the surround (he is, to my mind, the wordsmith equivalent of the best set designer/dresser EVER - when you read it, you see it) Mr. Womack excells in pure poetry. The slang, while somewhat difficult to parse at first, yields if you do -- most of it is poetry of the most romantic sort (in both senses of the term) and lovely. Much darker than Gibson's Sprawl, this is the Sprawl as it would more than likely be -- and human life is cheaper than ever. Excellent, excellent, excellent.

If you took the nigh-unintelligible Scotticisms of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting and the freaky neon dystopia of William Gibson's Neuromancer and bashed them together in the same pot, it might result in something resembling a book written by Jack Womack.Womack's speculative fiction is more social satire than proper futuristic sci-fi, and his "Dryco" series of novels in particular are flamboyantly dark and narrated by characters versed in a truncated pigdin English, an overt homage to Orwell's Newspeak. Ambient is the first of a proposed septology, and it sets the stage for a particularly skewed and tilted alternate America, devastated by an economic holocaust, fragmented by internal strife, and ruled by megacorporations. It's all deadly serious, but simultaneously tongue-in-cheek, which makes for a jarring, if engaging read.

A complete and total mindfuck, but not just for the plot, which involves two time-travelers from a future based around Elvis Presley going back in an attempt to abduct the young King and bring him back as a Messiah. Language in the future has evolved and mutated to an almost alien level, making the vocabulary of the two would-be kidnappers as much a challenge for the reader to decipher as the Scottish patois in Trainspotting was.

Riveting, unique and heartbreaking. A great story told from the point of view of a 12 year old girl in an eerie near future dystopian NYC.

The second book in Womack’s DryCo series; we learn about a chance the world had to change, as well as more about the origins of DryCo and its leadership.

*note to self. (copy from Al).

1989 ed. Unwin paperbacks. different cover.

cyberpunk.

*note to self. (copy from Al).