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Random Acts Of Senseless Violence (Paperback)

by Jack Womack (Author) "Mama says mine is a night mind ..." (more)

4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (27 customer reviews)

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Product Details

Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: GROVE/ATLANTIC; Reprint edition (Sep 1 1995)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0802134246
ISBN-13: 978-0802134240
Product Dimensions: 22.4 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm
Shipping Weight: 341 g

Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (27 customer reviews)

Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #93,808 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in these categories:
#81 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States > Drama
#81 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Drama > United States

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Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

A sort of prequel to his previous novels (Ambient, Elvissey, etc.), Womack's latest may be his best, a dark and riveting look at where our disintegrating, crime-ridden society may be headed. The only difference between Womack's near-future New York City and our own is that everything is just that much worse. Police and the National Guard patrol the poorer areas as though they were occupied territories; riot fires burn continuously in Queens and Brooklyn; jobs are as scarce as affordable homes and the streets are perilous. Womack displays this bleak world through the diary of 12-year-old Lola Hart, a student at a private girls' school whose financially strapped family moves to Manhattan's poor and troubled Upper West Side, on the edge of Harlem. There two new friends, Iz and Jude, teach her how to steal and instruct her in the ways of the mean streets. As bad turns to worse for her family, despair twists Lola into a vengeful killer. With a street-slick future-speak worthy of A Clockwork Orange and an unflinching eye for the degeneration of our cities, Womack portrays a relentlessly convincing tomorrow that will leave no reader unmoved.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

New York City in the near future: open warfare rages in Brooklyn, smoke from an unspecified toxic disaster fills the sky above Long Island, troops patrol Harlem streets, tuberculosis is rampant, inflation is zooming, and youth gangs rampage through the streets. Nationally, the situation is even worse; presidents are murdered within months of taking office, and riots are wrecking most of the major cities. This is the world of Lola Hart as recorded in a diary she receives on her 12th birthday. The mutating language of her diary reflects her own metamorphosis from prissy private school girl to murdering gangsta poised to disappear into the netherworld of New York's deadliest gang. P.K. Dick Award-winning novelist Womack's (Elvissey, Tor Bks., 1992) apocalyptic vision crackles with intensity, made more memorable by its controlling voice, as original as Alex's in Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange or Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker.
Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, Mass.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Inside This Book (Learn More)

First Sentence
Mama says mine is a night mind. Read the first page

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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover

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Customer Reviews

27 Reviews

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

Average Customer Review

4.5 out of 5 stars (27 customer reviews)

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Most helpful customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Best of Series?, Mar 11 2002

By	Jason (Seattle, WA, USA) - See all my reviews

I'd heard the name 'Jack Womack' beaten around as one of those Sci-Fi writers who goes beyond the genre to tell a genuinely good story. So I decided to check him out, but Random Acts of Senseless Violence was the only Womack book [that the local store hadd]. So I read it, despite the fact that it was mid-series.

And I loved it. Sure, there's plenty of dystopia writing out there already, and it's all been said before, and blah blah blah. But it's a good story, so forget the fact that it's probably been said before. It's very engaging, and it feels real enough that it's actually pretty horrifying.

I liked it enough that I'm now working my way through the rest of the Ambient series, chronologically (not that it really seems to matter which order you read them in). They're good, but they're just basic sci-fi (not that I'm knocking that)--techy gadgets, a new dialect (this is one of the funnest dialects I've read), a dirty and crumbly setting, and lots of mean people.

But the basic sci-fi of the rest of the series (so far, anyway--I still haven't finished the whole series) isn't what I would've expected after having started out with Random Acts. Which is disappointing in a way, but oh well. They're still good reads.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Impossible to put down, too easy to pick up time after time, Feb 14 2002

By	Tom Museth (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews

This is one of the finest novels of near-future America ever written. That may sound like a sweeping statement, but Womack's terrifying vision of the final years of a 20th century where an adolescent army exerts a brutal discipline on New York, global warming and pollution have turned summers into poisonous nightmares and the country's economy is disintegrating almost as fast as accepted social values has no sharper, keener rival in contemporary fiction.
I first read this book in 1995 after being sucked into Womack's twisted universe through Elvissey, still one of my favourite sci-fi novels. And though the science fiction genre has broadened vastly since the days of Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke, Random Acts still defies simple categorisation. There's no doubt it has sci-fi elements, but Like Orwell's 1984, I feel that Womack has tried not only to illustrate a nightmare portrayal of the near-future, but grasp the zeitgeist of mid-90s American society and break it down into its basest elements, shaping it and containing it in the most ideal setting in which to maximise its sense of claustrophobia, paranoia and arrogance - Manhattan Island.
The rapid urban decay of a world where presidents are assassinated like flies, police and soldiers wield their power like medieval tyrants, poorer neighbourhoods have reverted to tribal warzones and an inherent culture of hate, fear and anger permeate daily life is presented superbly through the diary of 12-year-old Lola. Womack's keen sense of Lola's pre-adolescent mind coming to terms not only with the crumbling world around her but also deeper, personal issues such as the disintegration of her family network and her own blossoming sexuality always remains evocative and concise. The first-person narrative moves flawlessly, and the decay of the world around Lola is mirrored brilliantly with her descent from conservative, middle-class comfort to an immersion in the angry and violent street life of Manhattan.
The most impressive vehicle Womack uses to describe this descent is the rapidly mutating form of Lola's narrative - in her first diary entries, the language she uses is that of a sheltered and innocent young, white Anglo-Saxon; by the story's end, it has transformed into the bizarre, poetic concoction of Latino, ghetto slang and bastardised English that constitutes gang dialect. Womack further develops his concept of future-speak in Elvissey, Ambient and his other novels with astounding creativity, and his linguistic capabilities are equally as clever as Burgess in A Clockwork Orange or anything by William Gibson.
It's a frightening microcosm that Womack depicts in Random Acts, and only the precursor to a world that grows more warped and hostile through the five other novels that succeed it chronologically. If you've never read Womack's work before, start here, and get ready for the ride of your life.

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1.0 out of 5 stars No Kate Wilhelm here, Feb 10 2002

By	aiwf (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This book was just awful. Mr. Womack has nothing new to say about how bad life is or how to deal with it. And I am just plain tired of seeing girls raped as a coming of age experience. If you really want to read this kind of story, go read Kate Wilhelm or Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. They did it better years ago and then they moved on.

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the 10 best books of the 20th century !!!!
I first read this book back in '95 when I was an employee at Tower books in Seattle. I'd read the back and the inside flap and was skeptical that I'd like it. Read more

Published on Oct 16 2001 by Leah

5.0 out of 5 stars Riveting and heartbreaking
In this amazing novel, Jack Womack creates an unforgettable and heartbreaking character in Lola, a twelve-year-old girl who receives a diary as a gift and in it chronicles her own... Read more

Published on Oct 14 2001 by Bucky

4.0 out of 5 stars Send one to the president
An excellent and important book--don't let the title alarm you. This is not something schlocky or exploitative. If you're thinking about picking it up, you should. Read more

Published on April 6 2001 by Michael Brumitt

4.0 out of 5 stars Hypnotic and Terrifying
Kudos to Womack. Random Acts is as creepy a book as I've read in some time, Kathy Acker's Don Q. notwithstanding. Read more

Published on Mar 27 2001 by Tracy Stevens