I'm really conflicted about this book. Some parts (first and last sections) were often hard to put down. The middle? Not so much. 
 Sweeping across two continents, the novel attempts to look at the Nigerian email scam from end to end, describing the forces acting on the scammers, from their roots in the poverty and squalor brought about by foreign oil companies sucking the land out from under the people, to the tragic consequences that con occur on the other end, to the victims of such scams. I don't think Ferguson was able to pull it off, at least not entirely successfully. 
 The Canadian and Nigerian strands of the story lie separate until close to the end, and I felt like I was reading two different novels at the same time. I am surprised that this novel received so much acclaim, and in particular, that it won the Giller.