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A review by jdglasgow
Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming
2.0
I feel a little bit bad going as high as 3 stars for LALD. There’s enough interesting moments, action-wise, that I feel generally positive about it. But that is with some *strong* reservations.
I was bothered by the racism of ‘Casino Royale’ and it is turned up to 11 here. Bond starts the book in Harlem and it’s all comments about “negroes” and “negresses” and their “negroid” features. He goes to a strip club, I guess, and describes the “feral” smell of the men’s sweat. Also, chapter 5 is literally titled “N***** Heaven”. During the end part of the book when Bond is in Jamaica, he keeps running across knobs of sand in the water he refers to as “n*****heads” SEVERAL times.
“But when this book was written it was a different time!” No, it wasn’t. It was not a different time. There is no such thing.
On a more positive note, I love that Bond is such a shitty secret agent. That is absolutely not what I had expected when I began reading these books (I’ve never seen the movies), but James Bond is captured and tortured 3 times in the first two books alone and falls for the most obvious traps. Great going, Jim.
The misogyny is still present, but not as front and center as before. I read another recent (?) review here on GoodReads suggesting Bond didn’t feel the need to talk down about Solitaire here because she is more submissive to begin with, whereas Vesper had the audacity to also be a secret agent herself. I can definitely see that perspective. Nonetheless, when all is said and done Bond is sipping vodka martinis with Solitaire, whom he describes as “the prize”, sitting at his knee. It couldn’t be more explicit: he won and she is the prize. She doesn’t have much of a role except to whimper at Bond throughout, even though she has PSYCHIC POWERS. Uh, why not use that more?
The plot itself, like ‘Casino Royale’, is sort of incomprehensible and dumb. It’s about illegal trafficking of sunken treasure and... let’s just leave it at that. Why multiple international spy agencies are involved with this scheme, or why Mr. Big is a part of SMERSH (the Russian anti-spy outfit introduced in the first book) when that is not important to the plot at all, these are questions best left unasked.
I mean, it’s fun in that trashy, pulpy way. The villain sneering at a captive Jim Bond is cool. The whole “shark” scene is fun. The sequence where Bond swims through a bunch of tropical sea creatures and gets attacked by an octopus (!) is the best part of the book by far. It’s good enough. It’s also terrible in a lot of ways, but I didn’t expect a masterpiece here. Overall, ickiness factor aside, it was fine. You won’t miss much by skipping it, though.
EDIT: I’m changing it to 2 stars. Three *was* too high.
I was bothered by the racism of ‘Casino Royale’ and it is turned up to 11 here. Bond starts the book in Harlem and it’s all comments about “negroes” and “negresses” and their “negroid” features. He goes to a strip club, I guess, and describes the “feral” smell of the men’s sweat. Also, chapter 5 is literally titled “N***** Heaven”. During the end part of the book when Bond is in Jamaica, he keeps running across knobs of sand in the water he refers to as “n*****heads” SEVERAL times.
“But when this book was written it was a different time!” No, it wasn’t. It was not a different time. There is no such thing.
On a more positive note, I love that Bond is such a shitty secret agent. That is absolutely not what I had expected when I began reading these books (I’ve never seen the movies), but James Bond is captured and tortured 3 times in the first two books alone and falls for the most obvious traps. Great going, Jim.
The misogyny is still present, but not as front and center as before. I read another recent (?) review here on GoodReads suggesting Bond didn’t feel the need to talk down about Solitaire here because she is more submissive to begin with, whereas Vesper had the audacity to also be a secret agent herself. I can definitely see that perspective. Nonetheless, when all is said and done Bond is sipping vodka martinis with Solitaire, whom he describes as “the prize”, sitting at his knee. It couldn’t be more explicit: he won and she is the prize. She doesn’t have much of a role except to whimper at Bond throughout, even though she has PSYCHIC POWERS. Uh, why not use that more?
The plot itself, like ‘Casino Royale’, is sort of incomprehensible and dumb. It’s about illegal trafficking of sunken treasure and... let’s just leave it at that. Why multiple international spy agencies are involved with this scheme, or why Mr. Big is a part of SMERSH (the Russian anti-spy outfit introduced in the first book) when that is not important to the plot at all, these are questions best left unasked.
I mean, it’s fun in that trashy, pulpy way. The villain sneering at a captive Jim Bond is cool. The whole “shark” scene is fun. The sequence where Bond swims through a bunch of tropical sea creatures and gets attacked by an octopus (!) is the best part of the book by far. It’s good enough. It’s also terrible in a lot of ways, but I didn’t expect a masterpiece here. Overall, ickiness factor aside, it was fine. You won’t miss much by skipping it, though.
EDIT: I’m changing it to 2 stars. Three *was* too high.