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3.81 AVERAGE
3.81 AVERAGE
Set in Asia. Hard to get swept-up in this book at first. An early premise was hard to swallow but turns out it was supposed to be a bad cover story, so OK. Later I picked this up again and got caught-up in the drama. One fun thing that's radically different from the films is that these stories are so psychological, poor Jason is tormented and scheming, always plotting.
I read these books out of order thinking this one would shed some light on the movie version. The first book did.
I read these books out of order thinking this one would shed some light on the movie version. The first book did.
How did I hate thee? Let me count the ways.
First a note about why then I finished all 600 and something badly written and long-winded pages of violence, passive misogyny, casual racism, occasional homophobic comments and fat-cat politics. i read it in the spirit of my friend who is a nurse who can't look away from horrible wounds and medical conditions because for me this book epitomised the sort of culture and discourses I was critiquing in my recent article (that has not yet been published nor rejected).
For starters, Marie the angel-wife who is nothing more or less than a projection of male wish fulfillment. Stunningly beautiful and angelically understanding she has brought Bourne/Webb back from the gates of hell (inside his own masculinity) and is always able to turn a blind eye to Bourne (even feeling sort of naively grateful to him) for the sake of "having Webb. She lets her husband embody the hegemonic masculinity, the compartmentalised place of violence and inability to deal with violence and she is the civilised, moral (and seductive) meaning and home for him to return to. On p181 it refers to the way her career is being "a professor's wife" and she cares about making a home which is of course not dwelt on simply dismissed as "the thousand and ten things a woman does to make a home". At this point I am vomiting!!! Why the hell is webb not helping with any of that? Oh yeah because he gets to be the action hero and the professor and the headcase and never has to suffer through the tedium of homemaking. Marie is also appreciated for her beef stew (p678). even though in the book she often acts courageously and decisively (always in reference to having been taught these skills by her anti-hero husband) she is many times throughout the plot reduced in this way to wife/helpmate. This is a consistent process for every female character (if I wanted to be here all day I would go through Staples in some detail...but also consider all the myriad whores in almost every scene Bourne goes to).
Then while I think Bourne's split personality is in some ways interesting (albeit horrible in the way his violence is not only excused but glorified), I have a huge problem with a government who feel they can justify deliberately triggering his PTSD in an ends-justifies-the-means unconvincing sort of morally smug argument throughout the novel (described as "ingenious" on p333...really? intentionally causing extreme suffering and danger to someone is "ingenious"?) smugly dismissed as "extenuating circumstances" on p581 and ultimately accepted as necessary by Webb himself, by Marie (although she is so passive and submissive over it all that her compliance may or may not signify agreeing) and even Webb's shrink who objects a few times throughout the book in a "you're terrible Muriel"- sorry that is an Australian movie reference-sort of an unconvincing refrain that adds nothing but length to an already long-winded book.
I am gaining a lot of respect for editors when I read writers who seem to think they are too good for them!
Sort of hollow laugh at p428 "no sexism intended but a woman probably couldn't have..." Those four words make the sexism more not less offensive. Ditch them! This whole book is about masculine delusions of grandeur, why pretend otherwise? There's a lot of stuff i would like to analyse on p489 but this is not my thesis! Suffice it to say the fake Bourne for me summed up nearly everything Poynting and Donaldson discussed in their article "Snakes and Leaders" (Google scholar it if you have time) but also the false dichotomy between him and the "good" violent men was part of that too.
The lack of consent of Webb to be pushed to be Bourne is a sort of rape-culture remnant in another form. the repeated assertions that the govt had "no other choice" is part of the current political scene where we increasingly see basic human rights as an optional luxury that often has to be dismissed for the sake of "security". I think entertaining this way of thinking even in fiction is dangerously flawed!
Finally Sheng Chou Yang the "Animal" p593 is part of the othering/dissociation of some (usually exoticised) scapegoats that validate and rehabilitate the violence and abuses of the "good guys" once again rape culture.
Finally on a less philosophical note, the torture scenes and violence were too drawn out and detailed. I skipped over them as much as I could but they were then constantly alluded back to. Quite honestly that sort of a world-view makes for people who are either depressed or cynical and ammoral. That and the length made this not a book that you would read purely for fun (where was the fun?) and really in every way it seemed the opposite of what this world needs right now.
First a note about why then I finished all 600 and something badly written and long-winded pages of violence, passive misogyny, casual racism, occasional homophobic comments and fat-cat politics. i read it in the spirit of my friend who is a nurse who can't look away from horrible wounds and medical conditions because for me this book epitomised the sort of culture and discourses I was critiquing in my recent article (that has not yet been published nor rejected).
For starters, Marie the angel-wife who is nothing more or less than a projection of male wish fulfillment. Stunningly beautiful and angelically understanding she has brought Bourne/Webb back from the gates of hell (inside his own masculinity) and is always able to turn a blind eye to Bourne (even feeling sort of naively grateful to him) for the sake of "having Webb. She lets her husband embody the hegemonic masculinity, the compartmentalised place of violence and inability to deal with violence and she is the civilised, moral (and seductive) meaning and home for him to return to. On p181 it refers to the way her career is being "a professor's wife" and she cares about making a home which is of course not dwelt on simply dismissed as "the thousand and ten things a woman does to make a home". At this point I am vomiting!!! Why the hell is webb not helping with any of that? Oh yeah because he gets to be the action hero and the professor and the headcase and never has to suffer through the tedium of homemaking. Marie is also appreciated for her beef stew (p678). even though in the book she often acts courageously and decisively (always in reference to having been taught these skills by her anti-hero husband) she is many times throughout the plot reduced in this way to wife/helpmate. This is a consistent process for every female character (if I wanted to be here all day I would go through Staples in some detail...but also consider all the myriad whores in almost every scene Bourne goes to).
Then while I think Bourne's split personality is in some ways interesting (albeit horrible in the way his violence is not only excused but glorified), I have a huge problem with a government who feel they can justify deliberately triggering his PTSD in an ends-justifies-the-means unconvincing sort of morally smug argument throughout the novel (described as "ingenious" on p333...really? intentionally causing extreme suffering and danger to someone is "ingenious"?) smugly dismissed as "extenuating circumstances" on p581 and ultimately accepted as necessary by Webb himself, by Marie (although she is so passive and submissive over it all that her compliance may or may not signify agreeing) and even Webb's shrink who objects a few times throughout the book in a "you're terrible Muriel"- sorry that is an Australian movie reference-sort of an unconvincing refrain that adds nothing but length to an already long-winded book.
I am gaining a lot of respect for editors when I read writers who seem to think they are too good for them!
Sort of hollow laugh at p428 "no sexism intended but a woman probably couldn't have..." Those four words make the sexism more not less offensive. Ditch them! This whole book is about masculine delusions of grandeur, why pretend otherwise? There's a lot of stuff i would like to analyse on p489 but this is not my thesis! Suffice it to say the fake Bourne for me summed up nearly everything Poynting and Donaldson discussed in their article "Snakes and Leaders" (Google scholar it if you have time) but also the false dichotomy between him and the "good" violent men was part of that too.
The lack of consent of Webb to be pushed to be Bourne is a sort of rape-culture remnant in another form. the repeated assertions that the govt had "no other choice" is part of the current political scene where we increasingly see basic human rights as an optional luxury that often has to be dismissed for the sake of "security". I think entertaining this way of thinking even in fiction is dangerously flawed!
Finally Sheng Chou Yang the "Animal" p593 is part of the othering/dissociation of some (usually exoticised) scapegoats that validate and rehabilitate the violence and abuses of the "good guys" once again rape culture.
Finally on a less philosophical note, the torture scenes and violence were too drawn out and detailed. I skipped over them as much as I could but they were then constantly alluded back to. Quite honestly that sort of a world-view makes for people who are either depressed or cynical and ammoral. That and the length made this not a book that you would read purely for fun (where was the fun?) and really in every way it seemed the opposite of what this world needs right now.
My edition isn't the movie cover, but I couldn't find a photo of the correct cover. It's mostly green and has a guy running in silhouette.
Well, at least there is a movie called The Bourne Supremacy. This book will not be made into a movie. The three movies are essentially the first book, stretched out into three movies.
The plot was silly, the whole storyline was weak. The Bourne Identity was a good book, but he dropped the ball on this one.
The plot was silly, the whole storyline was weak. The Bourne Identity was a good book, but he dropped the ball on this one.
Although this had multiple, pretty complicated plot lines, with at least a dozen main characters, it was carried off very well. For my taste, it became bogged down a few times in detailed explanations, but it recovered relatively quickly. Very good job.
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
While I have to admit to finding the book a little too long I did enjoy it more than the recent film of the same name. The film takes what had happened to David Webb's first wife as the starting point to remove Marie from the film so he can go rogue and go back to Europe to replay the "best of" scenes for the first film. That is not what happens in this book (thank goodness!)
The Bourne Supremacy was published in 1986 and so the story centers around the cold war politics of the pre return of Honk Kong to the People's Republic of China. While MI6, the CIA and the PRC are at odds trying to twart a plot by local cartel to take control of Hong Kong, David Webb is tricked into reviving Jason Bourne to both save Marie (who it turns out, doesn't need saving) and his reputation (another killer is pretending to be Bourne) he must do it at the risk of his sanity. The plot suffers sometimes from too many tangents where each of the factions have their few pages. It would have been a tighter plot had the book just stuck with David Webb/Jason Bourne, Marie Webb and let the other characters have their scenes when directly relevant to the two main characters.
The Bourne Supremacy was published in 1986 and so the story centers around the cold war politics of the pre return of Honk Kong to the People's Republic of China. While MI6, the CIA and the PRC are at odds trying to twart a plot by local cartel to take control of Hong Kong, David Webb is tricked into reviving Jason Bourne to both save Marie (who it turns out, doesn't need saving) and his reputation (another killer is pretending to be Bourne) he must do it at the risk of his sanity. The plot suffers sometimes from too many tangents where each of the factions have their few pages. It would have been a tighter plot had the book just stuck with David Webb/Jason Bourne, Marie Webb and let the other characters have their scenes when directly relevant to the two main characters.
I am not allowed to start the third book until I find a job. I didn't get out of my pajamas all day because of this book.
Anyone looking for a book that mirrors the adaptation that made Matt Damon the new spy fatale can move along and not read the rest of this review. Hollywood chose to keep the name of Ludlum’s second book in the series, but make it much more thrill-centred and nothing like what I remember of the movie. Alas, it goes to show that bombs and sex sells, while honest to goodness thriller books, set in a time before GPS technology and the like, seem to wither on the vine. I must say that while the book was a little dense and I found it too detailed in parts, it does reflect some of the keys of the world of espionage back in the mid- to late-1980s. Ludlum does an excellent job of encapsulating the hunt for truth and villains, against a very interesting backdrop (Communist China), while not flogging their ideology as the central theme of their villainous ways. I wish some of the newer thriller/crime writers could do that; divorce the incessant need to talk about Islam and Al-Qaeda in the same way.
Ludlum’s premise is that someone posing as Jason Bourne is out in China and Hong Kong killing some high ranking officials in the PRC government (remember, this is a time when Hong Kong was still under British rule). Bourne’s new wife is also taken captive, which acts as the impetus to send Bourne (aka David Webb, aka Delta) into the Orient to find his wife and determine who is trying to smear his name. The book focuses on the two plots of finding the imposter Bourne and Mrs. Bourne/Webb piecing things together about her capture and those responsible. With a ton of detail and character introduction, the reader may find it hard to distinguish between the original Jason Bourne (actually David Webb, also called Delta while he was in Vietnam) and the imposter, as names appear interchangeable at the drop of a hat. Add to that the fact that I was listening to the book (gotta love Scott Brick) and it got all the more confusing and made me have to pay special attention.
I must admit that Hollywood sure did kick the Ludlum estate in the gonads, trying to pass the movies off as parallels to the book. Not that I worry about the movie-going public, but anyone wanting to tackle the true and pure Bourne series will be sadly disappointed if their attention span is only that of shooting, killing, gore and sex.
Kudos Mr. Ludlum on a job well done. One more of your ‘pure’ books before you pass the torch on to another.
Ludlum’s premise is that someone posing as Jason Bourne is out in China and Hong Kong killing some high ranking officials in the PRC government (remember, this is a time when Hong Kong was still under British rule). Bourne’s new wife is also taken captive, which acts as the impetus to send Bourne (aka David Webb, aka Delta) into the Orient to find his wife and determine who is trying to smear his name. The book focuses on the two plots of finding the imposter Bourne and Mrs. Bourne/Webb piecing things together about her capture and those responsible. With a ton of detail and character introduction, the reader may find it hard to distinguish between the original Jason Bourne (actually David Webb, also called Delta while he was in Vietnam) and the imposter, as names appear interchangeable at the drop of a hat. Add to that the fact that I was listening to the book (gotta love Scott Brick) and it got all the more confusing and made me have to pay special attention.
I must admit that Hollywood sure did kick the Ludlum estate in the gonads, trying to pass the movies off as parallels to the book. Not that I worry about the movie-going public, but anyone wanting to tackle the true and pure Bourne series will be sadly disappointed if their attention span is only that of shooting, killing, gore and sex.
Kudos Mr. Ludlum on a job well done. One more of your ‘pure’ books before you pass the torch on to another.