What do You think about The Spy Who Loved Me (2003)?
I was not very wild about this particular installment.First off, it's quite short. The Bond stories by Fleming all tend to be thin, but this one is 50-60 or so pages shorter than a typical Bond novel. Given that most Bond novels are 200-250 pages, that makes this one pretty brief. By itself that wouldn't be a problem, but the first third of this book is all about a French Canadian girl's young adulthood experiences in school and working while having the occasional romantic misadventure. It's not a bad story, but the long and short of all that development is that she decides to go on a road trip south to Miami on a scooter to clear her head. That's an awful lot of elaboration to justify a road trip, and once things get into the "spy novel" aspect of the book (very little actual spying happens, really) all that background has no actual affect on the plot other than to serve as the occasional reference to how much better a man Bond is than any other man the protagonist has encountered.When Bond does finally show up, it's a pretty much random encounter. He arrives in the nick of time... but by accident. He just happens to appear at the motel where our lady narrator has taken up a little part time work on her way south. It seems the motel is owned by a sort of low-level mafioso type. The "mastermind" has a plan to burn the place down for the insurance money. If a few dead bodies get burned up in the place along the way then that's not going to bug the two thugs he sent along to get their hands dirty.That main plot isn't really up to the standard of international crime and massive secret organizations plotting to take over the world. It's a side adventure. In a computer game it would be a brief encounter with a few minor monsters designed to give a character a little extra experience and/or a treasure drop before encountering a minor boss. The boss in this case is mentioned, but never makes an appearance. Instead, we get two (suitably well drawn and described) thugs. Their dialogue is more than a little broad.The thin man said, "The lady's right. You didn't ought to of spilled that java, Sluggsy. But ya see, lady, that's why they call him Sluggsy, on account he's smart with the hardware. Sluggsy Morant. Me, I'm Sol Horowitz. They call me 'Horror.' Can't say why. Kin you, Sluggsy?" Yeah, OK. Cute, but a little slapstick for my taste.The narrative is generally good, if somewhat slavish in it's characterization of Bond, and there are a few odd bits. For example, in the first person narrative the protagonist often refers to Bond using his full name. James Bond was where I had left him, and, to keep him there, Sluggsy now kept up a steady stream of single shots.... Perhaps James Bond guessed the significance of this steady fire. That was a little odd. It was like listening to someone referring to himself in the third person. In this case, it's made weirder by the way the narrative jumps about between calling him "James" and "James Bond" apparently at random.I would be remiss not to report this next issue: We don't read Bond books in anticipation of a great characterization of women. However, I had hopes that this book might differ a bit from others and show a bit of development of the author when he spent so much time dealing with the perspective of a more-or-less developed female character. Granted, she's not portrayed as the sharpest pencil in the box, but she's basically a decent gal. Of course, she's hotter than she realizes and seems to alternately take that for granted and not realize it (a combination that many authors seem to find irresistible) but it was nice to see Fleming spend so much time trying to portray the mind of a young lady, even if that portrayal was generally a product of his time.Then...."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."Now, it is important to note that the word "rape" did have the same definition that it has now, but it also had a broader sense. Fleming is trying to describe there a more "vigorous" sort of sexuality, if you will. He wants to portray Bond as a "manly man" and he's getting at the strange appeal that the harsh and even cruel man can have to women when that harshness and cruelty are directed at other men--particularly rivals--is satiated by her stereotypically calming femininity, or more subtly if that barbarous maleness might even be utilized by the woman for her own purposes....However, the word "rape" has shifted away from the naughty "Ooh, you're so strong and forceful, baby!" meaning that Fleming was using. Now it is the more stark, violent violation concept, and those uses of the word that describe socially acceptable conduct, or even borderline conduct, are more or less gone. That means the casual use of the word is generally unacceptable as it evokes in the mind of many 21st century readers only the horrific crime of violence. Reading it in relation to the character of a woman in a piece of fiction is painfully obnoxious. I'm confident that Fleming didn't mean it in the way that most modern readers will understand that word, but that doesn't mean the reading experience is going to be better for that intention. It's not pleasant to read. It doesn't really matter if that's because it's dated and WE have moved on any more than it would matter if it were intentional and we should ignore it. A book like this is meant to be entertainment, and in our entertainment we shouldn't have to overwork our ability to justify the language of two generations ago. An astute reader is able to recognize it for what it is, but in this day and age, there's not a lot of reason why that reader should bother for something like a Bond novel. There are plenty of other books, authors and series available.Unless you're looking to read the whole Bond series or if you've got an afternoon to kill, I wouldn't really recommend this book. It's a quick, light read, and it has some action in it, but the overall story isn't up to snuff and in the scope of the whole Bond franchise it's really more of a diversion than an anything else. If you want a little diverting then go ahead, but it's more than likely you could find something else that would be better worth the time.
—Gary Foss
Although the fifth James Bond movie, 1967's "You Only Live Twice," was the first film in the series to radically differ from its source novel, perhaps no other 007 picture jettisons author Ian Fleming's original conception as completely as 1977's "The Spy Who Loved Me." In essence a remake of "YOLT," substituting nuclear subs for manned space capsules (check out the point-by-point comparison of the two films in Raymond Benson's excellent "James Bond Bedside Companion"), Roger Moore's third outing as Bond was a big, splashy, colorful and superbly entertaining film, sharing its title--and absolutely nothing else--with Fleming's original book. And this was quite deliberate, apparently, and by Fleming's request. The book, originally released in April 1962 and the 10th of 14 in the Fleming series, is, in many ways, the oddball of the Bond canon. It is the shortest of the 007 novels, the most sexually explicit, and, most significantly, is narrated in the first person...and by a woman, to boot! And whereas in the fifth book of the series, 1957's "From Russia, With Love," Bond didn't make his entrance until page 72, here, we must wait until page 90 (I am referring to the classic Signet paperback editions here; the run of books that was so popular during the 1960s, at the height of the "spy craze") for Bond to appear. Fortunately, it is well worth the wait, and his entrance at that point is as dramatic as can possibly be."TSWLM" takes the form of a manuscript that Fleming tells us was sent to him by a 23-year-old French Canadian woman named Vivienne Michel, and one that allows us to see Bond "through the wrong end of the telescope." Vivienne's manuscript is cleverly divided into three sections. In "Me," we learn of her background, including her childhood in Canada, her finishing-school years in London, and her two unhappy love affairs with men who turned out to be callous cads, leading to her decision to tour the U.S. on a Vespa and her short-term gig working at a motel near Lake George, N.Y. In "Them," we learn of how two thugs, Sol "Horror" Horowitz and Sluggsy Morant, had beaten her at the abandoned motel--for reasons unknown--and were about to sexually abuse her. And in "Him," we learn of the British secret agent who had happened by--"like the prince in the fairy tales," as she later tells us--and rescued her. Vivienne, as it turns out, is just as great a writer as Ian Fleming himself (ha ha!), and just as likely to use a plenitude of detail and product names while telling her tale. She is a very charming and self-assured young woman, who instantly gains our sympathies, and, in telling her own story, makes herself easily the most fully realized and (you'll pardon the expression!) completely fleshed-out female character in the Bond novels. Vivienne's tale is interesting to start with, despite its soap opera qualities, and turns out to be highly suspenseful and exciting by its conclusion. It affords us a look at Bond that is also unique in the novels; 007 had never before come off as so gallant, as such a white knight (the image of St. George and the dragon appears in the first section of Michel's tale as a bit of foreshadowing). And not just gallant as concerns the ladies; "TSWLM" gives us a glimpse into Bond's fair-play views on killing, too. When Vivienne demands to know why Bond just didn't shoot down the two thugs from a hidden position, Bond declares, "Never been able to in cold blood." And, in a moment that I just love, Bond tells Vivienne, "...these people are pros...By their own standards, that is." As it turns out, the two thugs are hardly a match for the man who had previously bested maniacs such as Red Grant and Oddjob, but still manage to give him a tough time. Bond, ultimately, has never seemed so appealing, as revealed in the farewell letter that he pens to Vivienne on motel stationery. No wonder Vivienne falls in love with him after just one night, and needs to be reminded by a fatherly state trooper that men like Bond, as well as the enemies they fight, are practically "a different species" altogether than the rest of us.Though almost 50 years old as of this writing, "TSWLM" remains remarkably fresh, if a tad dated in spots. References to Jack Kennedy, Trans-Canada Airlines, cheap gas in America (Vivienne tells us that her Vespa would be able to cruise for only $1 a day!) and $8 motels seem like time-capsule items from another age, and yet, the book is as thrilling today as it must have been five decades ago. Fleming, apparently, was dissatisfied with the novel--one that almost comes off like a breather between the S.P.E.C.T.R.E. nastiness of "Thunderball" (1961) and "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (1963)--hence his insistence on ditching the story when it was ultimately brought to the screen. It turns out that Fleming was a better writer than he was a critic, however. This is, quite simply, a marvelous, smashing tale, and one that this old Bond fan simply adores. Like the best of the Bond books, it is one that will leave readers both shaken AND stirred....
—Sandy
At this point in the series, Ian Fleming is on a rich vein of form - For Your Eyes Only, then Thunderball and now this ... (and OHMSS has started off very well too). I have to say though, this book swerved from being my least favourite Bond novel at about the halfway point, to my most favourite by two thirds through. I don't understand quite why that happened. It's very ... *very* different from every other in the series. It reminds me of a serious version of the Austin Powers idea of taking the baddie's henchmen that Powers kills and giving them a backstory that gives them flesh and blood and a rationale and sympathy from the audience, before Powers drives by and shoots them in cold blood while trying to escape. This tale is told entirely from the point of view of a "Bond Girl" very innocently caught up in a mob-driven plot to burn down a motel as an insurance scam. Even Bond appears purely as a coincidence to rescue her simply because his car had a puncture on the way back from catching a SPECTRE bad-guy in Canada.In the first part, I found the book perplexing - why were we being introduced to this girl, why was Fleming giving her such a disappointing series of sexual encounters and then leaves her in a storm alone in a motel in the Adirondack mountains. In part two, I hated Fleming for putting her through a series of distressingly sexual abuses (stopping short of her being raped ... but only just).And then .... and then Bond arrives ... and it all made sense. This is the reason women fall for Bond - normally we see the women appear halfway through Bond's adventure, but Bond appearing (literally) from nowhere halfway through her's, saving her life in a dashing, brave, devil may care way, the same cruel disregard for life as her attackers, but on her side ... the yank of the change of perspective from the other books, is almost breathtaking and I was very impressed. This was a very brave novel to give to his audience - an audience that just really wanted more of the same - and I'm not sure that its effect would be as emphatic had I not read all the other novels in sequence in such short order. Also, I'm not sure Fleming is a good enough writer to write successfully a whole novel from the perspective of a 23 year old French Canadian girl - certainly lots of the description could well have come from the mouth of Bond in other novels. But it's been a long time since I changed my point of view of a book so thoroughly in such a short sequence of pages, and for that I have to applaud Fleming.
—Phil
