Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination

Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination – Helen Fielding

Olivia Joules is a young British freelance journalist with a vivid imagination and a habit of inventing exciting stories, both in her head and occasionally in her articles. Her editors have warned her to stick to the facts. But when she is sent to Miami to cover a fashion launch, she meets Pierre Ferramo, a handsome, mysterious and wealthy man who claims to be a film producer, and becomes convinced that he is actually an al-Qaeda terrorist.

Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination, by Helen Fielding, the author of Bridget Jones’s Diary, follows Olivia as she pursues her suspicions, though no one believes her. Her investigation takes her from Miami to Los Angeles, where she infiltrates the Hollywood world, and then on to Sudan and the Bay Islands of Honduras. Along the way, she is recruited by British intelligence, faces genuine danger and discovers that her overactive imagination may not be so wrong after all.

Olivia is resourceful and determined, guided by a set of personal rules for life, such as not panicking and remembering that nothing is as bad or as good as it seems, which appear throughout the story. She also finds romance, though she is never quite sure whom she can trust.

Combining comic romance, spy thriller and satire of celebrity culture and journalism, the novel is a playful departure from Fielding’s earlier work, full of witty observations and absurd situations.

Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination is a fun, lighthearted read for fans of comic fiction and spy capers. It contains some violence and references to terrorism.