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Summary
Summary
At the close of the last millennium, Helen Fielding debuted the irrepressible (and blockbuster-bestselling) Bridget Jones. Now, Fielding gives us a sensational new heroine for a new era . . . Move over 007, a stunning, sexy-and decidedly female-new player has entered the world of international espionage. Her name is Olivia Joules (thatÂs ÂJ.O.U.L.E.S. the unit of kinetic energyÂ) and she's ready to take America by storm with charm, style, and her infamous Overactive Imagination.How could a girl not be drawn to the alluring, powerful Pierre Ferramo-he of the hooded eyes, impeccable taste, unimaginable wealth, exotic international homes, and dubious French accent? Could Ferramo really be a major terrorist bent on the Western worldÂs destruction, hiding behind a smokescreen of fine wines, yachts, and actresses slash models? Or is it all just a product of Olivia JoulesÂs overactive imagination?Join Olivia in her heart-stopping, hilarious, nerve-frazzling quest from hip hotel to eco-lodge to underwater cave, by light aircraft, speedboat, helicopter, and horse, in this witty, contemporary, and utterly unputdownable novel deluxe.
Author Notes
Helen Fielding was born in Morley, West Yorkshire, England on February 19, 1958. She studied English at Oxford University.
After college, she got a job working for the BBC television studios. She worked for numerous years as a newspaper and TV journalist. Her first book, Cause Celeb, was based on the experiences she had while filming documentaries in Africa for Comic Relief. Her other books include Bridget Jones's Diary, The Edge of Reason, Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination, Mad about the Boy, and Bridget Jones's Baby. She co-wrote the screenplays for the movies Bridget Jones's Diary and the sequel based on The Edge of Reason.
She has received several awards including British Book of the Year in 1997 and the Evening Standard Award Best Screenplay in 2002. She works as a full-time novelist and screenwriter.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Considering the number of writers who've tried, and generally failed, to do plummy Bridget Jones one better, it only makes sense that Fielding should take a vacation from the genre she spawned and seek (sort of) greener pastures. Her new inspiration? Think Ian Fleming. Fielding's ridiculous, delicious, wildly improbable plot goes something like this: freelance journalist Olivia Joules ("as in the unit of kinetic energy"), formerly Rachel Pixley (her whole family got run over when she was 14), gets bumped from the Sunday Times's international coverage down to the style pages thanks to the titular imagination (e.g., a story about a "cloud of giant, fanged locusts pancaking down on Ethiopia"). In between ducking twittering PR reps and airheaded blondes at a Miami face cream launch party, she uncovers what looks like an al-Qaeda plot, headed by a dreamy Osama bin Laden look-alike, who is either (1) a terrorist, (2) an international playboy, (3) a serial killer or (4) all of the above. Languid, mysterious Pierre Feramo returns Olivia's interest, and thus begins an around-the-world adventure that has plucky Olivia eventually recruited by MI6. In addition to the fun spy gear (e.g., Chlo? shades fitted with a nerve-agent dagger) there are kidnappings, bomb plots and scuba-diving disasters. Olivia is slim, confident and accomplished; ostensibly, she's "painstakingly erased all womanly urges to question her shape, looks, role in life," etc. But she still has her bumbling Jonesian moments, and though she may not need a man, she'll get one in the end. What's wrong with the book: two-dimensional characters, dangling plot threads, the questionable taste of al-Qaeda bombings in an escapist, comic spy novel. What's right: girl-power punch, page-turning brio and a new heroine to root for. (June 8) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
More than anything, freelance journalist Olivia Joules wants to write serious news stories, but because of her vivid imagination, Olivia instead finds herself relegated by her editors to the style section. While in Miami covering the launch of a new face cream, Olivia meets mysterious, sexy Pierre Feramo, the scientist responsible for developing the cream, and once again Olivia's imagination takes over. Is Pierre really a cosmetics-developing, movie-producing international playboy or could he be an al-Qaeda agent in disguise? Olivia, who knows a thing or two about changing one's identity, can't decide if her suspicions about Pierre are correct or merely a product of her fertile imagination. What is even worse is that if Olivia turns out to be right about Pierre, it means she might be falling in love with a terrorist! The author of the phenomenally popular Bridget Jones's Diary (1998) gifts readers with another endearing, irrepressible heroine, who, armed with her lists and survival kit, discovers in this deliciously fun novel that she has a natural talent for spying. Fielding's latest has all the ingredients of a good thriller--exotic locales, a resourceful heroine, intrigue, and a touch of sexy romance--but the book is also electric with Fielding's wry wit, and the combination is simply delightful. --John Charles Copyright 2004 Booklist
Guardian Review
The name is Joules, Olivia Joules. As in "unit of kinetic energy". As in British secret agent, licensed to kill. Post-Bridget Jones, Helen Fielding has written an action-packed thriller starring what the book jacket calls "a heroine for the 21st century". Olivia can hold her breath underwater for ages, ride a horse through the desert with Bedouins, take a punch, bargain with kidnappers, banter with criminal masterminds, and outwit serial killers. In contrast to the hapless Bridget, obsessed with her weight and determined to "develop poise and authority and sense of self as a woman of substance", Olivia is a shapely, resourceful blonde who is never "lonely and sad"; she's a "self-made woman, travelling the world in search of meaning and adventure". As she often tells herself, she doesn't need a man. Is an emotionless heroine who doesn't need a man just James Bond in drag? Well, sort of, and female fighters and leather-clad avengers are a current trend; but Olivia is more of a made-over Bridget than a hard-ass Lara Croft. She's an upwardly mobile orphan from Worksop, who has changed her name (from Rachel Pixley), lost a lot of weight, and become a freelance journalist. Olivia has travelled the world; she speaks French, German, Spanish and some Arabic, often reflects on contemporary politics, Islamic fundamentalism, weapons of mass destruction and international terrorism. She has resolved to become the antithesis of chicklit: "Over time, she had painstakingly erased all womanly urges to question her shape, looks, role in life, or effect upon other people." But despite this robotic self-description, Olivia isn't quite as tough or heartless as she sounds. Her career is rocky and her sensational stories (giant fanged locusts in the Sudan) haven't panned out. Olivia doesn't list her daily calories, but she does procrastinate, fantasise about interior decoration and giggle a lot. Demoted from foreign correspondent to style writer, she takes an assignment to cover a face-cream launch in Miami for the Sunday Times and "British Elan", and in the unlikely ambiance of South Beach, meets a suave film producer she decides is really Osama bin Laden. Her efforts to unmask his terrorist plan take her to Los Angeles, Central America, Cairo and Sudan, via many dangerous adventures and sexy, glamorous hotels, while her struggle to convince the FBI, CIA and MI6 that she has real information about terrorists gets her into a series of comic confrontations. Being a self-made woman of substance does get her a boyfriend or two ("It's raining men," she thinks at one point), and her Rules for Living (number one: don't panic) show her to be more vulnerable than she seems. From the cover illustration of a woman blowing a smoke ring to the logo, a tiny silhouette of a girl in diving gear, the novel plays off the macho iconography of Bond movies. Fielding's villainous mastermind is a campy and hilariously tasteless mixture of Bin Laden, Rudolph Valentino, Dodi al-Fayed, Omar Sharif, Hannibal Lecter, Italian fashion designers and various Bond megalomaniacs. Funniest of all is Olivia's spy gear, in a parody of the great scenes in which Q gives Bond his lethal boy-toys. Here her armoury includes a diamond ring with a knife, Chloe sunglasses concealing a saw and a dagger, Tiffany earrings with a locating beacon and a cyanide pill, exploding lipstick and blusher, and a weapon-packed Wonderbra. Olivia endures a sinister facial, like Bond at the hands of Dr No, which made me wonder if there's a thriller plot in death by bikini wax. In some respects, Fielding's parody of Fleming seems perfectly timed. In the world of James Bond, exaggeration and overactive imagination are the norm. The villains have exotic mansions on remote islands, thousands of assassins in their service, dreams of world domination, bizarre perversions. On the other hand, post-September 11 the Bond plots don't seem quite so preposterous, and we are all subject to the conspiracy theories/ heightened awareness of the level orange alert. Who among us has not spotted a possible Bin Laden in the supermarket checkout queue, imagined scenarios of the next terrorist attack, or thought about improvising a weapon out of a toothbrush and a weighted sock to fight off aeroplane hijackers? But in trading Jane Austen and Elizabeth Bennet as her literary models for Ian Fleming and James Bond, Fielding has inevitably lowered her aim and her game. She sends up all the conventions of the Bond stories - the outlandish, luxurious settings, the trademarks and brands, the chases and underwater scenes - but, next time around, these won't seem like such clever surprises. Moreover, there are jar ring inconsistencies in plot and tone as Olivia rushes from catastrophes ("the cold dank feel of dead drowned flesh against her own") to dressing for cocktail parties and dinner dates. The political commentary is also out of synch with the book's satiric tenor, whether it's an Arab terrorist raving about the arrogance, stupidity, violence and greed of western culture, or the little sermon delivered by Professor Widgett (the Q figure), on "the corruption of the good by the belief in their own infallible goodness . . . So you've got Bin Laden hitting the Twin Towers and Tony Blair invading Baghdad." It's a disturbing and controversial comparison for escapist fiction. Luckily Fielding sticks mainly to parody instead of preaching. The result is a book that's fast-moving and entertaining, if "deliciously shallow", as Olivia remarks of LA. Still, as Olivia's Sunday Times editor replies to her laments about her assignments, "there's nothing shallow about style, baby". Olivia Joules is not as lovable or as memorable as Bridget Jones; but Renee Zellweger will be great in the movie version, and she won't have to gain an ounce. Elaine Showalter's books include Inventing Herself (Picador). To order Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination for pounds 10.99 plus p&p call Guardian book service on 0870 066 7979. Caption: article-joules.1 From the cover illustration of a woman blowing a smoke ring to the logo, a tiny silhouette of a girl in diving gear, the novel plays off the macho iconography of [James Bond] movies. [Helen Fielding]'s villainous mastermind is a campy and hilariously tasteless mixture of Bin Laden, Rudolph Valentino, Dodi al-Fayed, Omar Sharif, Hannibal Lecter, Italian fashion designers and various Bond megalomaniacs. Funniest of all is [Olivia]'s spy gear, in a parody of the great scenes in which Q gives Bond his lethal boy-toys. Here her armoury includes a diamond ring with a knife, Chloe sunglasses concealing a saw and a dagger, Tiffany earrings with a locating beacon and a cyanide pill, exploding lipstick and blusher, and a weapon-packed Wonderbra. Olivia endures a sinister facial, like Bond at the hands of Dr No, which made me wonder if there's a thriller plot in death by bikini wax. In some respects, Fielding's parody of [Ian Fleming] seems perfectly timed. In the world of James Bond, exaggeration and overactive imagination are the norm. The villains have exotic mansions on remote islands, thousands of assassins in their service, dreams of world domination, bizarre perversions. On the other hand, post-September 11 the Bond plots don't seem quite so preposterous, and we are all subject to the conspiracy theories/ heightened awareness of the level orange alert. Who among us has not spotted a possible Bin Laden in the supermarket checkout queue, imagined scenarios of the next terrorist attack, or thought about improvising a weapon out of a toothbrush and a weighted sock to fight off aeroplane hijackers? - Elaine Showalter.
Library Journal Review
Meet Bridget Jones's successor: international spy Olivia JoulesAthat's J.O.U.L.E.S, as in the unit of kinetic energy. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
1 LONDON "The problem with you, Olivia, is that you have an overactive imagination." "I don't," said Olivia Joules indignantly. Barry Wilkinson, foreign editor of the Sunday Times, leaned back in his chair, trying to hold in his paunch, staring over his half-moon glasses at the disgruntled little figure before him, and thinking: And you're too damned cute. "What about your story about the cloud of giant, fanged locusts pancaking down on Ethiopia, blotting out the sun?" he said. "It was the Sudan." Barry sighed heavily. "We sent you all the way out there and all you came up with was two grasshoppers in a polythene bag." "But there was a locust cloud. It was just that it had flown off to Chad. They were supposed to be roosting. Anyway, I got you the story about the animals starving in the zoo." "Olivia, it was one warthog-and he looked quite porky to me." "Well, I would have got you an interview with the fundamentalist women and a cross amputee if you hadn't made me come back." "The birth of Posh and Becks's new baby you were sent to cover live for BSkyB?" "That wasn't hard news." "Thank God." "I certainly didn't imagine anything there." "No. But nor did you say anything for the first ten seconds. You stared around like a simpleton, fiddling with your hair live on air, then suddenly yelled, 'The baby hasn't been born yet, but it's all very exciting. Now back to the studio.'" "That wasn't my fault. The floor manager didn't cue me because there was a man trying to get into the shot with 'I'm a Royal Love Child' written on his naked paunch." Wearily, Barry leafed through the pile of press releases on his desk. "Listen, lovey ..." Olivia quivered. One of these days she would call him lovey and see how he liked it. "... you're a good writer, you're very observant and intuitive and, as I say, extremely imaginative, and we feel on the Sunday Times, in a freelancer, those qualities are better suited to the Style section than the news pages." "You mean the shallow end rather than the deep end?" "There's nothing shallow about style, baby." Olivia laughed. "I can't believe you just said that." Barry started laughing as well. "Look," he said, fishing out a press release from a cosmetics company, "if you really want to travel, there's a celebrity launch in Miami next week for some-perfume?-face cream." "A face-cream launch," said Olivia dully. "J.Lo or P. Binny or somebody ... there we go ... Devorée. Who the fuck is Devorée?" "White rapper slash model slash actress." "Fine. If you can get a magazine to split the costs with us, you can go and cover her face cream for Style. How's that?" "Okay," said Olivia doubtfully, "but if I find a proper news story out there, can I cover that as well?" "Of course you can, sweetheart," smirked Barry. Excerpted from Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination by Helen Fielding All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
