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Ambient (Paperback)

by Jack Womack (Author) "Later we speak, O'Malley," Mister Dryden confided to me, climbing into the car that morning; I sat shotgun next to Jimmy, the driver ..." (more)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
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Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

Set in a future New York City that seems like a horrible amalgam of A Clockwork Orange's London, modern-day Beirut and Germany during the Thirty Years' War, this thriller, Womack's first novel, does not live up to its ambitious theme. In 21st century Manhattan, a good portion of the citizenry consists of freaks engendered by a nuclear accident on Long Island. The freaks, or "ambients," of the title still retain a sense of community missing everywhere else in the world, however. Civic authority, such as it is, lies in Dryco, a conglomerate that controls the government. But things are falling apart inside Dryco. CEO Dryden Jr. believes that founder Dryden Sr. is destroying the company's solvency by speculating in Bronx real estate. Dryden Jr. persuades O'Malley, the novel's protagonist, to assassinate his father. The attempt misfires, and O'Malley must scramble to save his own life. Womack cites, and thus invites, comparison with A Clockwork Orange. But while Burgess used similar material to make serious fiction about connections between violence and dehumanization, and good and evil, the violence here merely titillates, and the tale is emp-ty of moral resonance and meaning.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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6 Reviews
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4.0 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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2.0 out of 5 stars I found it irritating, May 26 2002
Its pretty rare that I don't finish a book, unfortunately this was one of those cases. If I missed anything like a dramatic change in prose style (I stopped halfway through the book) then I apologise.

I found the positioning of 'Ambient' to be (as other reviewers have mentioned) an attempt at lying somewhere between cyberpunk and Burgess's classic Clockwork Orange. However in terms of actual implementation, the prose irritated me beyond all belief. The characters speak like drunken yodas. Don't get me wrong I'm fully in favour of taking dialects to the extreme to make a point in literature (Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh being an exemplary example) but I found page after page of this annoying doublespeak too much to bear.

When other reviewers say "this is a hard book to read" they are damn right. For me the return on investment wasn't worth it.

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5.0 out of 5 stars A Splendid Mix of Anthony Burgess and William Gibson, Oct 1 2001
By John Kwok (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
"Ambient" is William Gibson's cyberpunk vision cloaked in a future English quite akin to Burgess' in "A Clockwork Orange". Womack's daring, original prose is coupled with his stark, bleak vision of a future United States in which New York City has virtually succumbed to urban rot and environmental degradation, resembling a vast maximum security prison under martial law by the United States Army. Overseeing most of the economy is Dryco, a private firm run by Thatcher Dryden, an avaricious, insane version of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane. The story is narrated by Seamus O'Malley, Dryden's security guard, who lusts after Avalon, Dryden's girl Friday. This is a provocative, difficult novel to read, but one which brilliantly shows Womack's ample literary talents.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Circling the Drain, Jul 18 2000
In a world that sleeps as soundly as this one, Womack assails the capitalist *carnivora* with a feral eye and acid pen, beating on the reader's sensibilities as one would a Hitler pin'ata. Jack the world! Jack it up, hombre! Let's see, how to describe Womack's prose style.... A bomb laced with nails? A mechanosphere of vision-forming events? A neuro-syphilitic bundle of cliches? How about crash-compatible? Or a blast of heat from the pavement grate? Or a purling sewer rich with the gastric sludge of readerly motion-illness? "Experimental" is perhaps the wrong word here. Gamblers don't gamble, after all, and Womack knows the stakes of writing a novel in "Ambientspeak" this late in literary history (after Burgess, after Russell Hoban, et al.), as the bathos of dialogic exchange in the Dryco universe runs through its formulae, a dismal screech of hackneyed argot like fingernail on slate. I swear that once Mr. Womack learns how to balance his jargonautical neologisms with a subtler knowledge of myth and narrative (like a Hollywood with better acting), he may very well attain the eminence of a Don DeLillo, or a Cormac McCarthy, both key influences on the Dryco novels.... Yet out of all the writers who've made a habit of predicting and inventing the future, Womack is certainly the most charming, possessing a dashing narrative charisma that generates moments, images, elbow-nudging good times, on nearly every page. Very reassuring when we take into account his inevitable subject matter, the madnesses of socioeconomic inequality and exploitation.... Capitalism's predatory agenda to protect corporate interests at all costs, ambitions which entail the humiliation of the underclass (a group that is easy to identify, dislike, and control), cash cows that never see the light of day and are fed on gov't distillery slops; a society terrorized into stupidity by the commodified and the superficial. When Womack informs us that our corporate-owned U.S. Army has been waging a 20-year campaign against the citizenry of Long Island, the reader is compelled to chuckle, then sigh, then consider, then shudder. To what length would our gov't go to protect its commercial interests, whether they involve petroleum, narcotics, arms, or the minds, souls, and yoked bio-power of its starved-out citizenry? "It's true, do you think?" "Only the craziest parts." We let a world like this happen.... Add this novel to your shopping cart, friends, savor and enjoy it, all the while praying for Womack's future development, that he may one day stand in the square where martyrs are made.
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 		 Most recent customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Like "Clockwork orange" with a cyberpunk feel.
This is not an easy book to read. It contains a lot of violence, both physical and moral, combined with a very poetic language, which makes it reminiscent at times of mr Burgess... Read more
Published on Jul 3 2000 by Mar Calpena

5.0 out of 5 stars Ambient puts the PUNK back into cyberpunk!
A shocking and sobering view of urban decay taken the whole way into the future. One of the best Womack books there are! Right up there with 'Random acts of senseless violence'
Published on Jan 25 1998 by fd82@dial.pipex.com

4.0 out of 5 stars A wry and confronting future tale about buisness.
Jack Womack's first book is an introduction into his future vision of the United States. In the wake of a massive sharemarket collapse and currency re-valuation most of everything... Read more
Published on Jun 27 1997

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