#128. RANDOM ACTS OF SENSELESS VIOLENCE By Jack Womack

Published : 1993
Pages : 223
Overall Mark : 8/10

Ten minutes in the future, Lola Hart is writing her life in a diary. She’s a nice middle-class girl at the calm end of town. But in a disintegrating New York she is a dying breed. War is breaking out on Long Island, gangs fight in the streets, five presidents have been assassinated in a year. No one notices any more. Soon Lola and her family must move to the Lower East side and the new language of violence of the streets.

JACK WOMACK (1956-)
Jack Womack was born in Kentucky but currently lives in New York City. In addition to his writing, he has worked in publicity for a number of major US publishers. He won the 1993 Philip K Dick award with Elvissey and has the distinction of being one of William Gibson’s favourite authors.

VERDICT

There isn’t much in this book that couldn’t be applied to the world around us today but, by placing the action in a dystopian New York, we are given scenarios that we’d like to think don’t or couldn’t happen to us that surprisingly feel incredibly real, mostly thanks to the first person diary narrative that really allows us to see the events of the world through a child’s eyes as everything around her falls apart.