Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination

by Helen Fielding | Literature & Fiction |
ISBN: 0330432745 Global Overview for this book
Registered by tiggsybabes of Pontefract, West Yorkshire United Kingdom on 4/2/2006
Buy from one of these Booksellers:
Amazon.com | Amazon UK | Amazon CA | Amazon DE | Amazon FR | Amazon IT | Bol.com
3 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by tiggsybabes from Pontefract, West Yorkshire United Kingdom on Sunday, April 2, 2006
Dulicate copy bought for sharing.

Amazon.co.uk Review
Where do you go after Bridget Jones? Creator Helen Fielding's response has been to go somewhere completely different. Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination, Fielding's fourth novel, is a spy-thriller whose sassy heroine, the eponymous Joules, doesn't fret about weight gain, laddering her tights or Chardonnay and fags in the manner of her predecessor. Oh no--Olivia, once plain old Rachel Pixley from Worksop, is a self-made, go-getting journalist for the Sunday Times and Elan magazine with, or so her colleagues at the ST maintain, "an overactive imagination" and an impeccable gift for languages. Both of these come in handy when Olivia is despatched to Miami to cover a face-cream launch, meets the enigmatic Pierre Ferramo, an international playboy, and finds herself on the scene of an al-Qaeda bomb attack. (Question: where, exactly, do Elsie and Edward rustle up that tray of tea from?)

Cue meetings with suitably disreputable people (wannabe film stars, Arab carpet vendors, spies, terrorists) in an array of exotic locales (LA, Honduras, Egypt) as Olivia goes on the trail of the terrorists and, utterly implausibly, is recruited to MI6 (they can't get the staff nowadays). A ridiculous plot is not exactly a hanging offence in a spy-thriller, which is probably just as well here. Sadly, for Fielding, however, we do inhabit a post-Austin-Powers universe and Olivia, a walking digest of Susan Jeffers platitudes, is hard to take: seriously or otherwise. None of it is very funny, nor thrilling. Olivia is more Nancy Drew than Modesty Blaise or, crucially, Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum.

Still, you can have great fun playing Bond-bingo with the clichés. Family wiped out in freak accident. Tick. Greasy henchmen. Tick. Gadgets. Tick. Charismatic al-Qaeda villain, who to Olivia's amusement, admittedly, really does use the sentences: "It is a great delicacy in our land" and "Evidently, you are connoisseur of great beauty. As am I." (Alas, "I expect you to die, Ms Joules" and "He's inside the belly of that steel beast", do not materialise.) Maybe there's a clue in the title; perhaps the whole shebang is intended to be taken with a huge bag of Saxo. As Scott Rich, the CIA hunk, says to Olivia as the tale closes: "Oh don't be silly, lovey. It's just a figment of your overactive imagination." If only. --Travis Elborough



Journal Entry 2 by tiggsybabes at Bookbox in N/A, A Bookbox -- Controlled Releases on Sunday, April 2, 2006

Released 17 yrs ago (4/3/2006 UTC) at Bookbox in N/A, A Bookbox -- Controlled Releases

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

RELEASE NOTES:

added to redhouse's bookbox #4.

Journal Entry 3 by lellie from Trimley St Mary, Suffolk United Kingdom on Wednesday, August 9, 2006
In my Bookbox#4 When it came home.

Not a great fan of Helen Fielding. THis is destined for RABCK or wild release, or maybe another bookbox.

Journal Entry 4 by lellie from Trimley St Mary, Suffolk United Kingdom on Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Had a go at this, but it failed to engage me.
I'm releasing it into my Bookbox#9 "Move It On"

Journal Entry 5 by oliveoyle from Sheffield, South Yorkshire United Kingdom on Friday, January 26, 2007
Taken from the "Move it on" bookbox. Thaank you!

Journal Entry 6 by oliveoyle from Sheffield, South Yorkshire United Kingdom on Thursday, February 8, 2007
Hmmm... I didn't give this much of a chance, I'll admit. But having read the first 20 pages I decided that I really, really wasn't going to enjoy it and that I'd better stop now before I started to really lose my rag! But thank you for sharing it anyway - it's always good to know what an author's got out there. But I've got to say, after Bridget Jones' Diary, which I really enjoyed, this is somewhat disappointing. What a shame! Come on Helen Fielding - you can do better than this!

Are you sure you want to delete this item? It cannot be undone.