Well-written, excellent idea and decent enough characters. I really didn't feel much connection to Laura, but I did really like Nnamdi's character and eventually Amina's. i enjoyed the parts of the novel with Nnamadi and Joe as their banter was comedic and a good portrayal of friendship in a novel where no character seemed to have friends at all. The interesting part of 419 is the concept of 419 itself - "Section 419 of the Criminal Code:Obtaining Goods Through False Pretenses". I've never really understood internet scams and this novel gives you a glimpse into that world and how the scammers reel their victims in hook, line and sinker. I give it a 3 out of 5 because I wasn't overly thrilled by the ending.

When I first read the synopsis for this book I thought to myself that I must read it as it sounded like a great premise. I read some of the reviews and I would have to agree with most of them. Overall this is a great book that I would recommend... but with a couple of caveats. First off the branching story line can get a little distracting. It makes sense in the overall story but some characters are given a rather lengthy introduction in the middle of the novel and it takes a long time before it becomes clear why they are important or if I should care about them. This may have been worth it if the back stories really added to the overall plot but I didn't feel they did. I feel we are led to believe some of these characters play a much larger role then they really do. At times I felt like the author was simply using these characters to show us how much research he did about Nigeria. This makes it a slog to get through some parts of the book. I found the first third and the last third of the book fantastic and couldn't put it down, the middle third however moved a little slow with a lot of environmental description and not a lot of story progression. Bouncing back and forth between the characters I found myself wishing that we spent more time with some then others… unfortunately it seemed to be the reverse of what I wanted. The good news is that the effort it took to get through the middle was worth it. I found the end very satisfying and really enjoyed how it was wrapped up. Over all I would recommend the book to everyone however be aware that you may hit a wall in the middle of the book. I felt as if it could have been 100 pages shorter, but urge you to keep going as it pays off in the end.

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