Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination - Softcover

Fielding, Helen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330432745 ISBN 13: 9780330432740

Publisher: Picador, 2004

Synopsis

Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination is the 'Bond-style romp' from Helen Fielding, the bestselling author of Bridget Jones's Diary.

Enter Olivia Joules: fearless, dazzling, independent beauty-journalist turned master-spy – a new heroine for the twenty-first century. In Miami for a face-cream launch, she spots Pierre Ferramo across a room. Dangerously charismatic and undeniably gorgeous, with impeccable taste, unimaginable wealth and exotic international homes, he seems almost too good to be true. But what if Ferramo is actually a major terrorist bent on destruction, hiding behind a smokescreen of fine wines, yachts and actresses slash models? Or is it all just a product of Olivia’s overactive imagination?

From the white heat of Miami to the implants of LA, the glittering waters of the Caribbean to the deserts of Arabia, Olivia Joules pits herself against the forces of terror armed with a hatpin, razor-sharp wits and a very special underwired bra. Helen Fielding has written a contemporary and utterly unputdownable thriller de luxe.

About this title

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

Review

A Bond-style romp. The thrills come thick and fast. Olivia is entirely successful as a heroine because she is witty, kind, entertaining, occasionally accident-prone, and has Bridget’s warm intelligence and humorous insight in spades. (Wendy Holden Literary Review)

Shimmers and glares with wit, sophistication and humanity. Hurrah for Fielding! (Helen Brown Independent on Sunday)

Edition details

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0330432745
• ISBN 13: 9780330432740
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 352