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Loading... 419by Will Ferguson
   » 8 more Books Read in 2015 (1,267) Books Read in 2013 (1,025) Urban Fiction (73) Books read in 2015 (145) Books Set In Africa (36) No current Talk conversations about this book.  DeltaQueen50 | Oct 4, 2022 |   So she travels to Lagos to to get her money back. I spent this novel thinking, "please stop this," with increasing urgency. I remembered an ad that starts "if you're in a horror movie, you make bad choices. It's what you do," and this novel follows that pattern. I didn't empathize with the main character, but I did understand her. I was horrified enough to keep reading, and happy with the cathartic ending. I will read more novels by Mr. Ferguson. (  ) minxcr1964 | Dec 28, 2021 | The story does take you for a ride. Just when you think it's a murder mystery, it changes gears. Then you think it's this. Then that. Then back to the murder mystery... Sometimes the storytelling POV did a strange flip partway through a scene that was a touch off-putting, but it was rare. Overall though, it was the characters that made this book, that grabbed me and wouldn't let me go, long after a less well-written book would have been set aside. As I said, not my normal read and not a story I'd be quick to jump back into again, but I did enjoy it. (  ) TobinElliott | Sep 3, 2021 | shows how oil companies have altered tribal life and how desperation can drive a person to do unethical yhings nancynic | Jul 15, 2021 | ) tinkerbellkk | Apr 27, 2020 |
 So what to make of 419? Surely, talented authors should stretch their bounds. Ferguson can do many things, from travel writing to joke-telling to satire. What he can’t do is present believable earnestness. As an artist, 419 plays to all of his faults, and few of his talents. He has attempted to test himself by writing an international tragedy in the vein of Michael Ondaatje, but has imported many more of Ondaatje’s excesses than achievements.  The novel is further enlivened by sharp dialogue and imagery. Looking out from her apartment window at Calgary’s crane-crowned winter skyline, Laura sees “a city that was constantly erasing and rewriting itself. A cold city, exhaling steam.” Later, Nnamdi remembers the day the men from the oil company suddenly emerged from the dense mangrove thickets to stake the villagers’ ancestral land: “More and more men boiled out of the [jungle] gap like ants.” But too often, especially in the novel’s first half, the prose reveals a talented author working against the instincts and storytelling gifts that served him so well in his other works. Hopefully Ferguson finds equally compelling material to work with in his next novel, be it comic or otherwise, and this time trusts his gut a little more.  Until Ferguson’s characters move toward inevitable confrontations in Lagos, 419 suffers some drag. But from roughly page 187 on, you won’t sleep until you finish, and then rest won’t come easily. Riveting. Provocative. AwardsNotable Lists
A car tumbles through darkness down a snowy ravine. A woman without a name walks out of a dust storm in Africa. And in the seething heat of Lagos City, a criminal cartel scours the Internet, looking for victims. Lives intersect. Worlds collide. And it all begins with a single email: 'Dear Sir, I am the daughter of a Nigerian diplomat, and I need your help ... ' At once a chilling thriller about a lonely woman avenging her father's death and an epic portrait of morality and corruption across the globe, Will Ferguson's Giller Prize-winning novel plunges into the labyrinth of li. No library descriptions found. 
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LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumWill Ferguson's book 419 was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers.  Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.68)
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Wikipedia in English (1)
4
Henry Curtis, retired teacher from Calgary, Alberta swerves his car into a snowy ravine, leaving behind a devastated family. It is revealed that Henry was a victim of a 419 Nigerian scam and that his death is being ruled a suicide. His daughter, Laura, sets out to track down the people she considers her father’s killers not realizing the extreme danger she is putting herself in. But there is much more to 419 than this one story, the author gives us a detailed picture of the country of Nigeria by introducing a number of other characters, telling their backstory and showing the desperation and poverty that is rife in this country.
I was riveted by this book and felt rewarded by the excellence of the story and the writing. Will Ferguson is better known as a travel writer and humorist, but he certainly put together an interesting and well researched thriller with this book. (