Annoyed by this, the altogether oddest of the James Bond novels? Well, all I can say (as a proud Canadian) isYes, 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 had 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 s...

Ian Fleming's most unusual James Bond novel is told through the eyes of the fictional character Vivienne Michel. While working & living at the Dreamy Pines Motor Court near the Canadian border she sits & thinks back over her life as a storm approaches. When, over half way through the book, James Bond eventually appears you feel he's almost arrived in the wrong story.This a is a really wonderful character driven story that is incredibly atmospheric. Fleming was never totally happy with th...

First published in 1962, the tenth book in the series, completely unlike the movie of the same name, it focuses on a fallen women with a lot of zest, Vivienne Michel crossing the country on her Vespa and falling afoul of some hardnuts in a remote motel. By a freak accident, along comes James Bond. A surprsingly dark, yet classic James Bond adventure. Three Star stars, a 7 out of 12 read.

2012 read

"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, ...

“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. Spy 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 with Bond in iy migh...

This is a story unlike any other in Ian Fleming’s series of James Bond novels – a first person narrative told from the perspective of a young woman who is rescued by Bond.Akin to the short story “Quantum of Solace” this is not really a Bond story in that it is instead an examination of the Bond myth peripherally, told by a witness to his acts. Vivienne Michel is a young French-Canadian with a troubled past who finds herself caught up in a crime scene in the Adirondacks. 007 happens along and in ...

"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 MeReads more like a John D. MacDonald thriller than a typical James Bond novel. I liked it. It was like James Bond was tired of catching crap about not being able to write or develop female characters, so he wrote a novel entirely from the perspective of the woman. Unfortunately, at the end, it was STILL a woman in peri...

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...

(B) 74% | More than Satisfactory
Notes: James Bond, deus ex machina, incongruously stumbles, à la television crossovers, into a coming-of-age romance novel.

Rating: 3.75* of five1977's film, not 1962's book, is under discussion. The film is not one single thing like the book. Apparently, the story was forbidden to the filmmakers, though not the title. I had no idea the films were so contentious, litigious, and all-around ornery to make! This rewatch has been quite an education.I now know I will never be A Critic, as in publicly known to the civilians, in books, music, or film. I hate the Po-Mo MFA Pit-Sniffers in vogue among Those Who Read Seriously...