"All women love semi-rape. They love to be taken." --Ian Fleming, writing as the character Vivienne Michel in 'The Spy Who Loved Me'. 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬In a word. No. >: @No. Just no. Maybe there are a few, like one or two, female kinksters who agree with the above sentiment expressed by the fictional narrator of this James Bond book, Vivienne Michel, created by a male author. But for the huge, HUGE majority of women, rape is a criminal act, prosecutable, damaging, h...

This story stands apart in Ian Fleming’s James Bond series – a first-person account narrated by a young woman who James Bond rescues.Similar to the short story “Quantum of Solace,” this isn't strictly a Bond adventure. Instead, it’s a peripheral exploration of the Bond legend, witnessed and recounted by Vivienne Michel. She's a young French-Canadian woman haunted by her past, who becomes embroiled in a crime scene in the Adirondacks. Agent 007 appears and, in true Bond style, does what he does b...

I WAS RUNNING away. I was running away from England, from my childhood, from the winter, from a sequence of untidy, unattractive love-affairs, from the few sticks of furniture and jumble of overworn clothes that my London life had collected around me; and I was running away from drabness, fustiness, snobbery, the claustrophobia of close horizons and from my inability, although I am quite an attractive rat, to make headway in the rat-race. In fact, I was running away from almost everything except...

Annoyed by this, the outright weirdest of the James Bond novels? Well, all I can say (as a proud Canadian) is:Yes, folks, for whatever reason Fleming not only decided to experiment with writing a book from the first person perspective of a proverbial "Bond Girl", he also somewhat randomly decided to make her a Québécoise French Canadian orphan who'd had a rough time of it, relatively speaking, in life and love in London as a young woman and thus, entirely logically of course, decided to buy a se...

Ian Fleming's most unique James Bond novel, *The Spy Who Loved Me*, is told from the perspective of Vivienne Michel, a fictional character. Working and living at the Dreamy Pines Motor Court near the Canadian border, she reflects on her life as a storm brews. When James Bond finally appears more than halfway through the book, it feels like he's wandered into the wrong story entirely. This is a truly wonderful, character-driven story, incredibly atmospheric. Fleming himself was never completely ...

First published in 1962, and the tenth book in the series, Ian Fleming's *The Spy Who Loved Me* is completely different from the movie adaptation. This novel centers on Vivienne Michel, a woman with a troubled past but plenty of spirit, as she travels across the country on her Vespa and unfortunately runs into some tough guys at a secluded motel. By sheer chance, James Bond arrives. A surprisingly dark, yet classic James Bond adventure. Three stars, a 7 out of 12 read. 2012 read If you're looki...

“It was like a miracle to suddenly see him here, out of the blue.” –Vivian, speaking of James BondThe Spy Who Loved Me (1963) is the tenth book in Ian Fleming’s spy thriller series featuring James Bond, except this one doesn’t feature Bond. **The Spy Who Loved Me** is a departure from any approach he ever took before in that it is 1) his initial first person account and one 2) told from the perspective of a woman. If you know Sean Connery’s Bond, the Bond of the movies, could you believe a movie...

"Love of life is born of the awareness of death, of the dread of it. Nothing makes one really grateful for life except the black wings of danger."― Ian Fleming, The Spy Who Loved MeThis reads more like a John D. MacDonald thriller than a typical James Bond novel, and I'm here for it. It felt like Ian Fleming was tired of getting flak for not being able to write or develop female characters, so he penned a novel entirely from a woman's point of view. Unfortunately, in the end, it still fell into ...

(B) 74% | More than Satisfactory
Notes: James Bond, a walking deus ex machina, stumbles incongruously, like something out of a bizarre TV crossover, right into the middle of a coming-of-age romance novel. If you're looking for unique James Bond book reviews, this one is definitely... something.

Rating: 3.75* out of fiveWe're talking about the 1977 film, not Ian Fleming's 1962 novel, *The Spy Who Loved Me*. The film is a different beast entirely compared to the book. Apparently, the filmmakers were forbidden from using the actual story, just the title. I had no idea these Bond films were so contentious, litigious, and generally difficult to produce! This rewatch has been quite an eye-opener.I now realize I'll never be a capital-A Critic, you know, publicly recognized in the world of boo...