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3.03 AVERAGE
3.03 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
God this was such a slog.
This can safely be considered a failed experiment as it has proved beyond doubt that Ian Fleming does not know how to write women. The narrative voice of James Bond is so engaging in the rest of the series, and here Fleming gives that up for 50 pages of the personal history of a character that no one has any reason to give a shit about. So glad that he sticks to what he knows for the rest of the series (i.e. not how to write actual female characters)
This can safely be considered a failed experiment as it has proved beyond doubt that Ian Fleming does not know how to write women. The narrative voice of James Bond is so engaging in the rest of the series, and here Fleming gives that up for 50 pages of the personal history of a character that no one has any reason to give a shit about. So glad that he sticks to what he knows for the rest of the series (i.e. not how to write actual female characters)
The book was a fast read, however it was unusual in that James Bond is only in the book for a few chapters and the story is told by the point of view of a female protagonist. This didn’t feel appropriate in telling a James Bond story as some of the ideas are still dated in expectations of how men and women react and are treated by the society of the story.
⭐️⭐️⭐️12.11.18
I am slowly reading the original Fleming Bond books. An oddity in the series, this. It reads like a short story (Bond only appears in less than seventy pages of the book) that has been expanded to fill a whole (if short) novel.
So the first one hundred and twenty pages are the life story of the female protagonist and then the tale of her being held under house arrest in the middle of nowhere in a closed Motel by two very unpleasant men whose agenda is, at that point, unknown. Bond then shows up and saves the day.
It’s also unusual for one of these books in that it is told in the first person, that of the girl who is held against her will.
The first part of the book was dull to read - her background, what she did in the years leading up to her being in the Motel - is irrelevant and had the book continued in that vein then it would have illicited a maximum of two stars, but when Bond turns up is does genuinely get better. I still think the pages he was in, told as a short story , would have been more readable than this book turned out to be though.
Oh, and it bears zero resemblance to the movie at all, apart from a throwaway lime about one of the bad guys having had his teeth capped with metal. It’s mentioned once in the book and is, presumably, the basis for the Jaws character from the film.
⭐️⭐️⭐️16.12.23
Perhaps because my expectations were lowered because I remembered not really enjoying this book the first time around, this time I found it more than bearable. As I said before, this is the story of a girl in her early twenties who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and got caught up in a “incident” where she was saved by a dashing secret agent who just happened to be passing.
I think one of the things that made it so bearable was that this was a very short book, had it been fifty pages longer, or more, then it would have been stretching the (very simple) premise. The fact that Bond only appears in the last third of the book did not annoy me this time - probably because I was expecting it - and I was left with much more of a feeling of satisfaction reading it this time around. I’m still giving it the same star rating as last time, but if I was marking it out of ten the score would probably have increased by one.
I think that’s the final Bond book that I have read - it put me off to the degree that I never read the last four. I will shortly rectify that.
I am slowly reading the original Fleming Bond books. An oddity in the series, this. It reads like a short story (Bond only appears in less than seventy pages of the book) that has been expanded to fill a whole (if short) novel.
So the first one hundred and twenty pages are the life story of the female protagonist and then the tale of her being held under house arrest in the middle of nowhere in a closed Motel by two very unpleasant men whose agenda is, at that point, unknown. Bond then shows up and saves the day.
It’s also unusual for one of these books in that it is told in the first person, that of the girl who is held against her will.
The first part of the book was dull to read - her background, what she did in the years leading up to her being in the Motel - is irrelevant and had the book continued in that vein then it would have illicited a maximum of two stars, but when Bond turns up is does genuinely get better. I still think the pages he was in, told as a short story , would have been more readable than this book turned out to be though.
Oh, and it bears zero resemblance to the movie at all, apart from a throwaway lime about one of the bad guys having had his teeth capped with metal. It’s mentioned once in the book and is, presumably, the basis for the Jaws character from the film.
⭐️⭐️⭐️16.12.23
Perhaps because my expectations were lowered because I remembered not really enjoying this book the first time around, this time I found it more than bearable. As I said before, this is the story of a girl in her early twenties who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and got caught up in a “incident” where she was saved by a dashing secret agent who just happened to be passing.
I think one of the things that made it so bearable was that this was a very short book, had it been fifty pages longer, or more, then it would have been stretching the (very simple) premise. The fact that Bond only appears in the last third of the book did not annoy me this time - probably because I was expecting it - and I was left with much more of a feeling of satisfaction reading it this time around. I’m still giving it the same star rating as last time, but if I was marking it out of ten the score would probably have increased by one.
I think that’s the final Bond book that I have read - it put me off to the degree that I never read the last four. I will shortly rectify that.
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Save yourself some time and just go read some fanfic. I promise it’ll be better.
Comically bad for such a famous series. Even Rosamund Pike narrating couldn’t make it good. I listened at 1.6 speed until Bond showed up and was surprised to find myself ~75% through. It was so, so bad.
The main character is an idiot and I giggled quite a lot at how she worries there’s going to be a forest fire after the giant thunder storm and enough rain to make the soil wet is what set off the drama in the first place. How this got published is beyond me.
Also, you can defeat James Bond for a little while by yeeting a TV at his head.
James Bond, shirt off, ‘classic dueling stance’, backlit by fire, bleeding slightly, smelling of cordite and sweat, high on benzoates.
This is what Ian Fleming thinks is hot. That and ‘semi-rape’. Big Yikes, my guy.
Comically bad for such a famous series. Even Rosamund Pike narrating couldn’t make it good. I listened at 1.6 speed until Bond showed up and was surprised to find myself ~75% through. It was so, so bad.
The main character is an idiot and I giggled quite a lot at how she worries there’s going to be a forest fire after the giant thunder storm and enough rain to make the soil wet is what set off the drama in the first place. How this got published is beyond me.
Also, you can defeat James Bond for a little while by yeeting a TV at his head.
James Bond, shirt off, ‘classic dueling stance’, backlit by fire, bleeding slightly, smelling of cordite and sweat, high on benzoates.
This is what Ian Fleming thinks is hot. That and ‘semi-rape’. Big Yikes, my guy.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Xenophobia, Sexual harassment
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
I can't write a review scarhing enough. The world's biggest misogynist writes a book from a femal point of view... Just don't bother with it.
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
I think it’s important for readers to respond to books on an instinctive level. In this way, I believe that we gain, when responses are taken together overall, a genuinely objective view of a text, be it novel, poetry, non-fiction, translation, graphic novel, audiobook, theory and criticism, article, or any other piece. And I would love to get into all kinds of discussions about how the reader is intrinsic to the reading of a text, and how every reader’s interpretation of a book they’ve read is inseparable from who the reader is themselves, but I really only want to flesh out my immediate response to this James Bond novel.
Bearing in mind the above and although I may be accused of a biased reading towards a feminist critique, as a woman, I cannot help but respond subjectively to the presentation of women in ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’. And neither do I believe that certain discourses should be censored just because they are influenced by a subjective identity.
This novel is a powder keg with regard to considerations of the Male Gaze, and forces me to question everything I have previously written about representations of women in reviews of other Ian Fleming Bond novels. Ultimately here, the construct of Vivienne Michel that Fleming forms in ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’ is never anything but a sex object: she is the figure of the sexual prize; she exemplifies the male delight in physical subjugation and violation of women.
Every man in the book, without exception, is presented in terms of his sexual relation to the character of Viv: her first sexual partner coerces her into an (absurdly lewd) encounter, which is itself an instance of public indiscretion and exposure; her second partner amounts to a case of sexual harassment in the workplace. Both of these are affairs with (unbeknownst to Vivienne) men engaged to other women. Both are also instances of privileged male characters subjecting the sole female character to emotional abuse: one an upper-class public schoolboy coercing Viv to ‘go all the way’ with him before he heads off to university; the other her Nazi-sympathiser employer who mandates an abortion when he impregnates Viv.
In fact, Ian Fleming commits nothing to paper that isn’t within the confines of Vivienne’s sexual history. It’s quite extraordinary! He attempts to write in the first-person perspective of a woman, yet can think of no other dynamic that a woman might have in the broad span of the world and her experience, than the sexual. This is despite tokenistic manoeuvres on Fleming’s part to insinuate ironic self-deprecation into Vivienne’s internal monologue: ‘Wasn't I the girl who'd decided to operate without a heart? Silly idiot. Silly infatuated goose. This was a fine time to maunder like a girl in a woman's magazine.’
Viv’s entire backstory is a catalogue of men who have intended to rape her. And from there, it is dangerously easy to extrapolate that this is all a woman can aspire to or expect; a female character’s/woman’s life is reduced to the singularity of contemplating or anticipating the act of intercourse with a man. This stance cannot help but imply that this is all a woman is good for, and I find it curious to remark upon how many male readers have given this a three-star to five-star rating!
If you think I’m being too reactionary, just try and figure out Fleming’s presentation of Vivienne Michel’s character from the following quotation of her inner monologue after having sex with James Bond:
Bearing in mind the above and although I may be accused of a biased reading towards a feminist critique, as a woman, I cannot help but respond subjectively to the presentation of women in ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’. And neither do I believe that certain discourses should be censored just because they are influenced by a subjective identity.
This novel is a powder keg with regard to considerations of the Male Gaze, and forces me to question everything I have previously written about representations of women in reviews of other Ian Fleming Bond novels. Ultimately here, the construct of Vivienne Michel that Fleming forms in ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’ is never anything but a sex object: she is the figure of the sexual prize; she exemplifies the male delight in physical subjugation and violation of women.
Every man in the book, without exception, is presented in terms of his sexual relation to the character of Viv: her first sexual partner coerces her into an (absurdly lewd) encounter, which is itself an instance of public indiscretion and exposure; her second partner amounts to a case of sexual harassment in the workplace. Both of these are affairs with (unbeknownst to Vivienne) men engaged to other women. Both are also instances of privileged male characters subjecting the sole female character to emotional abuse: one an upper-class public schoolboy coercing Viv to ‘go all the way’ with him before he heads off to university; the other her Nazi-sympathiser employer who mandates an abortion when he impregnates Viv.
In fact, Ian Fleming commits nothing to paper that isn’t within the confines of Vivienne’s sexual history. It’s quite extraordinary! He attempts to write in the first-person perspective of a woman, yet can think of no other dynamic that a woman might have in the broad span of the world and her experience, than the sexual. This is despite tokenistic manoeuvres on Fleming’s part to insinuate ironic self-deprecation into Vivienne’s internal monologue: ‘Wasn't I the girl who'd decided to operate without a heart? Silly idiot. Silly infatuated goose. This was a fine time to maunder like a girl in a woman's magazine.’
Viv’s entire backstory is a catalogue of men who have intended to rape her. And from there, it is dangerously easy to extrapolate that this is all a woman can aspire to or expect; a female character’s/woman’s life is reduced to the singularity of contemplating or anticipating the act of intercourse with a man. This stance cannot help but imply that this is all a woman is good for, and I find it curious to remark upon how many male readers have given this a three-star to five-star rating!
If you think I’m being too reactionary, just try and figure out Fleming’s presentation of Vivienne Michel’s character from the following quotation of her inner monologue after having sex with James Bond:
‘All women love semi-rape. They love to be taken. It was his sweet brutality against my bruised body that had made his act of love so piercingly wonderful. That and the coinciding of nerves completely relaxed after the removal of tension and danger, the warmth of gratitude, and a woman's natural feeling for her hero. I had no regrets and no shame. There might be many consequences for me. Not the least that I might now be dissatisfied with other men, but whatever my troubles were, he would not hear of them. I would not pursue him and try to repeat what there had been between us. I would stay away from him and leave him to go his own road, where there would be other women - countless other women - who would probably give him as much physical pleasure as he had had with me. I wouldn't care. At least, I told myself I wouldn't care. Because none of them would ever own him, own any larger piece of him than I now did. And for all my life, I would be grateful to him, for everything. And I would remember him forever as my image of a man. How silly could one be? What was there to dramatise about this naked male person lying beside me? He was just a professional agent who had done his job. He was trained to fire guns, to kill people. What was so wonderful about that? Brave, strong, ruthless with women, these were the qualities that went with his calling, what he was paid to be. He was only some kind of a spy. A spy who had loved me. Ha! Not even loved, slept with. Why should I make him my hero, swear never to forget him? I suddenly had an impulse to wake him up and ask him, 'Can you be nice?' 'Can you be kind?'’(Citation typed from an audiobook; any and all errors in the text are my responsibility.)
I haven't read any Harlequin romance novels, but I presume that that's exactly what this was. Was interesting to have that perspective, meaning the Bond girl, and see the limited wall James Bond plays. Well written and enjoyable, though definitely not something that would be written today with certain words and phrases.
adventurous