William Gibson told me about this book in this article, wherein he said, "It's a book you really have to read to see why." Elsewhere, in a New York magazine article listing his top ten Sci-Fi books, he said it describes a "a heart-rending and perpetually more likely near-future Manhattan."
I agree with him on both counts.
Looking around online I see a lot of people describing it as "thrilling" and "hilarious." I think the people who think that are the Ones Who Will Be First To Die when It happens.
Random Acts is the diary of a 12-year-old girl living in Manhattan in the not-distant future. America is in Trouble, and the rest of the world isn't doing too well, either. It's not so much Post-Apocalyptic as simply Apocalyptic. From what the 12-year-old tells us in snippets of reports of what she saw on TV news, it seems to be an Economic crash that's led to Los Angeles and every other city burning. The National Guard and Army are trying to keep rioting Brooklynites from lobbing mortars across the river onto Manhattan. Presidents keep getting killed. Nobody has a job, inflation is out of control, and tuberculosis is common.
Two books I thought of while reading it:
2) The Fan Man--there's a Mister Mossbacher in Random Acts whom I envisioned as Horse Badorties, had he eaten some of the Brown Acid and not had a good heart.
