I could not put this book down. At times I was a little confused with what was happening, but sooner or later everything ended up making sense. It opens your eyes to a real world of criminals, victims and the power of technology.

419 by Will Ferguson, winner of the 2012 Scotia Giller Prize, is worthy of the attention its getting. A gripping and suspenseful novel with a large cast of fascinating characters, 419 is beautifully and skilfully written. The threads of the plot and the characters are so disparate that the reader wonders how the author can possibly manage to bring them all together, but the writing is so good that the reader is confident that Ferguson will. In the hands of a lesser writer, the plot could seem contrived, but never does … just tragic in so many ways. Nearly everyone becomes a victim of self-delusion, from the Canadian man scammed by a 419er from Nigeria to the 419er himself. The characters themselves are wonderfully drawn, by turns sympathetic, frustrating, pathetic. We're discussing this novel in our women's book group in about a month and I'm looking forward to the discussion.

A very interesting book – an “inside” look at the Nigerian scams. However, it would have been much improved if at least 50 pages in the middle of the book – dealing with Nigerian travels and Nigerian village life – had been removed. The heroine’s survival was unrealistic.

I found this book a little confusing at times, but overall it was a very interesting read. I liked the way the author tied all those people's lives into one story. Excellent story writing and well deserving of it's award!

The problem with prize-winning novels is, we can’t read them without thinking, “Would I have given this a prize?” We can’t read them without comparing them with the other contenders and second-guessing the work of the judges. 419 received the 2012 Scotiabank Giller Prize—a rather big deal here in Canada. No matter what people think about this book, with a Giller Prize win Will Ferguson won’t have any trouble signing book contracts for future projects. Is he deserving? I think so. 419 begins with the stories of four very different, seemingly unconnected, people: Laura, a copy editor living in Calgary; Winston, a Nigerian internet scammer; Amina, a pregnant Muslim woman travelling through Nigeria alone to flee a mysterious threat; and Nnamdi, a boy from the Nigerian Delta who leaves his village to work for American oil interests. As savvy readers, we know they will inevitably connect, but Ferguson unfolds the story carefully, so we must keep reading to see how these disparate threads intertwine. Even when the inevitable meeting happens, we can’t predict the final outcome, so we must keep reading to see what transpires. I wouldn’t call it a page-turner, but I would call it compelling. 419 is the section in the Nigerian Criminal Code that deals with obtaining money through fraudulent means—internet email scams, for example. A significant portion of this book is set in Nigeria, and Ferguson does an outstanding job (Dare I say prize-winning?) of portraying Nigeria with harsh truths but respect and love. While reading, I thought repeatedly, “A Canadian wrote this?” How could a writer not born, raised and steeped in Nigerian culture capture it with such sensory precision? When reading Ferguson’s description of a car trip through Lagos, I could almost see, hear, smell the African city. Ferguson wrote some beautiful phrases that I stopped and savoured. “She had outwalked her own dialect . . .” “Wealth produced garbage as surely as food produced f*ces.” The book didn’t resolve itself in the way I would have wished, but it did resolve in a way that was true to the story. So, what are the flaws? Perhaps the subject? Most North Americans have armed themselves with spam filters and skepticism enough to avoid falling prey to schemes like those portrayed in the book. I didn’t read it from an “If I’m not careful, this could happen to me” perspective, but more a “This is what used to happen to people” point of view. I had to read this book because it won the Giller Prize. I tried to set its prize-winning status aside when reading. Was it deserving? I think so. But you should definitely give the other shortlisted books a try, too.

I have read Will Ferguson as a humor and travel writer, but this is my first encounter with his fiction. 419 is a fantastic book for the most part, smart, and very much the work of a writer who is indulging himself in his craft. Set 1/3 in Calgary--with unabashed references to that city's geography and culture--the rest of 419 takes place in Nigeria. It paints an often-bleak but impressively-researched portrait of that country, attempting to avoid anything as cliché as the African sob story (though this is unavoidable at times). His Nigerians are, mostly, very real people living in a distressing world where Western enterprises have led to pollution and corruption, but have given birth to Nigerian enterprises as well, many of them corrupt themselves, such as the titular money scheme. As one of the characters tells us, "It's always about the money." The separate stories spin independently for so long that I was honestly surprised when they started to connect. This would be my only complaint, that the second section, where two critical Nigerian characters are developed for some time without almost any reference to the characters established in the first section, does go on for a bit,.But this is a writer taking his time, as I said, and I feel it pays off in the end. He takes the time to create humans before putting the pieces together in a series of Dickensian (but acceptable) moves. A modern thriller, but a thriller you believe. The white-knuckle last hundred pages work so well because they are so plausible, you can easily see yourself in this place, this risk. Who hasn't seen a spam email asking for help and wondered however briefly if, perhaps just this once, this is for real.

Anyone who uses the internet should be required to read this book. It clearly demonstrates the reasons behind the frauds and the reasons they work.

What happens when one gets caught up in the con game, the email that is known worldwide. In Nigeria, it refers to the law (419) where one cons someone out of something. Twisting stories whereby you meet a Canadian family and their tragedy that has just occured. But there is more... two different people in Africa are about to meet and see how all their lives are entangled like the Nigerian jungles. Admittedly, the ending is not what you think

When I hear of a book having won the Giller Prize, I expect what would be a good (if not great) read. Unfortunately, this is the second time around that i've picked up a Giller Prize winner and have been left disappointed. I found it difficult to follow the story because of the way the author chose to present it. It constantly goes back and forth between the main characters (Laura & company), the '419' scam artists in Lagos, and perhaps the most puzzling part of the book a story of a lone starving woman wandering sub-Saharan Africa which even through a good third of the way through the book has absolutely no connection to the main story. Way too much time is spent on this character (the lone wandering African woman); it completely detracts from the main story and bogs it completely down to the point that it's hard to stay interested in the book at all. I've since had to stop reading about halfway through. I personally don't recommend the book, but to each their own.

I was rolling my eyes through some of this book - who would fall for an internet scam? But the walking pregnant woman kept me reading. The story of Nnamdi I found to be extremely interesting, needless to say the end of the book caused me some grief with his death. The one thing that I did not like about this book was Laura's ending - I was rooting for her, she did it! Then all of a sudden she's pulled into a scam just like her dad? She's given everything away all in one succinct paragraph...I doubt after all she'd been through this would happen. Other than that very interesting and enjoyable read.