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The Spy Who Loved Me
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The Spy Who Loved Me
Unavailable
The Spy Who Loved Me
Audiobook4 hours

The Spy Who Loved Me

Written by Ian Fleming

Narrated by Rosamund Pike

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

3/5

()

Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

For the first time, followers of the James Bond
adventures will see Agent 007 as he appears through the eyes of a beautiful
woman, a woman who, in the midst of brutality and terror, recognizes Bond for
what he is: a handsome and appealing killer. But only a killer can help her
now.

When 007 turns up at a sleepy American backwoods
motel, it doesn’t take him long to realize that Vivienne Michel is in a tight
spot-or that Sol Horror and Sluggsy Morant are hardened killers bent on
destruction. Escaping from a past she doesn’t want to relive, Viv turns to
James Bond to save her … and love her.

This story of a night of horrifying fear in the
Adirondacks bears the customary Fleming hallmark: what Max Lerner in the New
York
Post called “his enormous resourcefulness…his sure
sense of what will fascinate and terrify the reader, his contriving of
hairbreadth escapes.”

This audiobook includes a bonus interview with
Rosamund Pike.

Editor's Note

Sultry & suspenseful...

A departure from his typical 007 novels, “The Spy Who Loved Me” is told from the perspective of an infamous Bond Girl. As voiced by Rosamund Pike, this might be the most sultry take on the famous spy yet.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 1, 2014
ISBN9781481507721
Unavailable
The Spy Who Loved Me
Author

Ian Fleming

Ian Lancaster Fleming was born in London in 1908. His first job was at Reuters news agency, after which he worked briefly as a stockbroker before working in Naval Intelligence during World War Two. His first novel, Casino Royale, was published in 1953 and was an instant success. Fleming went on to write thirteen other Bond books as well as two works of nonfiction and the children’s classic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The Bond books have earned praise from figures such as Raymond Chandler, who called Fleming “the most forceful and driving writer of thrillers in England” and President Kennedy, who named From Russia with Love as one of his favorite books. The books inspired a hugely successful series of film adaptations that began in 1962 with the release of Dr. No. He was married to Ann O'Neill, with whom he had a son, Caspar. He died in 1964.

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Reviews for The Spy Who Loved Me

Rating: 3.114814917530864 out of 5 stars
3/5

405 ratings25 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It was a long time ago that I read it, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, and all the more so for the fact that it was told from the perspective of the woman.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An odd Bond --as if written by Mignon Eberhart or some other damsel-in-distress writer --POV s a young Canadian woman (living in Britain) sent to close down a motel in the the woods of upstate New York, menaced by two sadistic gangsters when James Bond just happen to stop by en route from an assignment in Toronto and rescues her.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This is such a strange "James Bond" book, as James is barely in it! He doesn't show up until chapter 10 - and there's only 15 chapters! Overall, this is a pretty boring effort. It is written from the point of some woman named Viv, and the first 6 chapters are all about her, and they are dull, dull, dull. Then two tough guys, Horror and Sluggsy, cross her path, and then, finally, 007. SPOILER ALERT - he rescues her, has sex with her, and then leaves her. The End.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I don't like how this starts off pretending that James Bond is real and that Fleming is just communicating something he learned from other sources. I hate that trope. With the exception of A Series of Unfortunate Events, I've never seen it done really well enough to not completely disjoint me from the story.Edit: Ugh...At least the first five chapters are the life-story of an insipid, obnoxious Bond girl as well as her adventures in being raped by her boyfriend. This is not why I read Bond.Update: It continued in this vein. It was painfully boring until Bond's eventual arrival near the end of the book. Viv was just an annoying character (though Fleming did a pretty decent job characterizing her). She was not likable (or even pitiable). Hopefully, this was an experiment on Fleming's part and this is never repeated.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This was the first James Bond story that I have read, though I've seen quite a few of the movies, including the one that shares a title with this book. However, the only similarities between this book and the movie are the title, and a character by the name of Bond, James Bond. It was an okay read, full of terribly corny dialogue and characters, some PG-13 type sex and violence, and not much else.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It's hard to go wrong with a classic like this and Ian Fleming didn't disappoint. It's a fast paced action adventure and the low page count makes it impossibly fast to read.It is one of the shortest and most sexually explicit of Fleming's novels, as well as a clear departure from previous Bond novels in that the story starts off the the perspective of the "Bond girl." In fact, most of the book is from her perspective and takes place before she ever meets 007!A young Canadian woman by the of Vivienne Michel finds herself traveling across America on a scooter. She breaks for a bit at a motel and is offered a job watching the place by herself until the end of the season. On her first night alone, two thugs come in to rough her up and do who knows what else. Bond himself does not appear until two thirds of the way through the book, when he waltzes in the motel after suffering a flat. Obviously he saves the day and seduces the girl, but in order to learn all the awesome details you'll have to read this classic for yourself.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    The Spy Who Loved Me is the ninth novel in the James Bond series and completely different from Fleming's other books in the series: The story is told from the view point of a female character and is devoid of much of the action and language that are the coin in the world of espionage. Instead, what we have is a sexual ingenue who gains experience rather quickly through this story arc which takes her from her native French-speaking Canada to London, Switzerland and back to North America. In seeking to start over from her misadventures of the heart and body, Viv has fled Europe and seeks to start over in Florida. She first heads back to her hometown and then starts her journey southwards. In upstate New York, short on funds, she agrees to work as a front desk clerk at The Dreamy Pines Motor Court. Here, a situation develops and Viv finds herself in a jam.

    Enter James Bond. His car has broken down on a dark and stormy night and he seeks refuge at the motel. The scene is set: There's thunder, lightening, bad guys and a damsel in distress! The action unfolds quickly and with missing scenes: For the first time in a Bond novel, we are not sure of what Bond is doing throughout as we are only seeing him when and how Viv sees him. And the image that she sees, without the benefit of actually knowing him, provides another dimension to Bond's character in that we have a greater sense of his physicality and presence via the impact he has on his surroundings and people.

    The sexual content of The Spy Who Loved Me is surprisingly explicit, given that it was published in 1962 - a time when social conventions had not yet allowed for open discourse on sex and sexuality. Even now, nearly fifty years later, the sexual candor may make the listener uncomfortable, especially when Viv delivers the lines about how,
    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...
    Fleming always manages to deliver a provocative sentiment in his Bond novels; but the whole of The Spy Who Loved Me seems to have been intended to incite unconventional sentiment: The departure from the action-adventure modus, the detailing of Viv's sex life, the contempt Fleming seems to bear women... At the same time, there is a certain literary bravery in Fleming's willingness to write something different and controversial, inserting it into a successful series where certain expectations had been set.

    The Spy Who Loved Me was narrated by the British-American narrator, Nadia May (a.k.a. Wanda McCaddon.) Nadia May delivered the story with confidence and empathy; but Ms May sounds a bit old to be voicing a twenty-five year-old, especially as there is no convention with the story indicating that The Spy Who Loved Me is the reminiscence of an older woman. The tense is only slightly future past perfect, so listeners may reasonably have expected a younger voice. There were minor processing issues in regard to the quality of the audio itself, most noticeably at the beginning of the audio; but nothing terribly egregious: Perhaps a slightly-too-heavy hand on the expander which led to an odd sound chop at the end of some words.

    Redacted from the original blog review at dog eared copy, The Spy Who Loved Me; 05/24/2012
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Most of the book is a romance, narrated by a woman. If you've read any Ian Fleming, you know this is a recipe for disaster. It's some of the worst stuff I've ever read. There is some action in the middle, which is readable by comparison. Eventually James Bond even shows up, but since there's so little to the plot, he has to be written as sleepy, sloppy, and bumbling. If he behaved at all like James Bond, the bad guys would be dead within a paragraph of his arrival. The girl falls in love with him anyway (naturally - all any woman in Fleming's mind wants is for her rapist to be a gentleman), and her heart will never be the same again.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    "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."Fleming structured the novel in three sections—"Me", "Them" and "Him" to describe the phases of the story.MeVivienne "Viv" Michel, a young Canadian woman narrates her own story, detailing her past love affairs, the first being with Derek Mallaby, who took her virginity in a field after being thrown out of a cinema in Windsor for indecent exposure. Their physical relationship ended that night and Viv was subsequently rejected when Mallaby sent her a letter from Oxford University saying he was forcibly engaged to someone else by his parents. Viv's second love affair was with her German boss, Kurt Rainer, with whom she would eventually become pregnant. She informed Rainer and he paid for her to go to Switzerland to have an abortion, telling her that their affair was over. After the procedure, Viv returned to her native Canada and started her journey through North America, stopping to work at "The Dreamy Pines Motor Court" in the Adirondack Mountains for managers Jed and Mildred Phancey.ThemAt the end of the vacation season, the Phanceys entrust Viv to look after the motel for the night before the owner, Mr. Sanguinetti, can arrive to take inventory and close it up for the winter. Two mobsters, "Sluggsy" Morant and Sol "Horror" Horowitz, both of whom work for Sanguinetti, arrive and say they are there to look over the motel for insurance purposes. The two have been hired by Sanguinetti to burn down the motel so that Sanguinetti can make a profit on the insurance. The blame for the fire would fall on Viv, who was to perish in the incident. The mobsters, are cruel to Viv and, when she says she does not want to dance with them, they attack her, holding her down and starting to remove her top. They are about to continue the attack with rape when the door buzzer stops them.HimBritish secret service agent James Bond appears at the door asking for a room, having had a flat tyre while passing. Bond quickly realizes that Horror and Sluggsy are mobsters and that Viv is in danger. Pressuring the two men, he eventually gets the gangsters to agree to provide him a room. Bond tells Michel that he is in America in the wake of Operation Thunderball and was detailed to protect a Russian nuclear expert who defected to the West and who now lives in Toronto, as part of his quest to ferret out SPECTRE. That night Sluggsy and Horror set fire to the motel and attempt to kill Bond and Michel. A gun battle ensues and, in the process of escaping, Horror and Sluggsy's car crashes into a lake. Bond and Michel retire to bed, but Sluggsy is still alive and makes a further attempt to kill them when Bond shoots him.Viv wakes to find Bond gone, leaving a note in which he promises to send her police assistance and which he concludes by telling her not to dwell too much on the ugly events through which she has just lived. As Viv finishes reading the note, a large police detachment arrives. After taking her statement, the officer in charge of the detail, reiterates Bond's advice, but also warns Viv that all men involved in violent crime and espionage, regardless of which side they are on—including Bond himself—are dangerous and that Viv should avoid them. Viv reflects on this fact as she motors off at the end of the book, continuing her tour of America, but despite the officer's warning still devoted to the memory of the spy who had loved her.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Why did Fleming choose to write a novel in the first person of a female protagonist? I have no idea. Perhaps he was tired of complaints about the way he wrote his female characters; perhaps someone, whom he felt he must answer, had accused him of misogyny and he wanted to show an empathy for the fair sex; perhaps he was simply bored and wanted a change.Whatever the reason, Fleming makes a fair fist of it. His Vivienne Michel is well executed; the character has had less than happy experiences with men but she is resilient and remains unembittered and untwisted. She is a strong yet attractive character. This is not the writing of a misogynist in any degree.The problem with The Spy who Loved Me is that the reader comes away with the feeling that it started from the wrong premise. Graham's "Marnie", my own "Motherhood" or any of du Maurier's forays into the opposite sex, all start with the story and then tell that from the POV that seems to work best. The Spy who Loved Me, on the other hand, gives the impression that Fleming started off with the character and then groped around for a story to hang it on. Very likely under editorial pressure, he tried to turn it into a Bond novel. Unfortunately, some eighty pages have already been spent explaining how Vivienne came to be where she is at the start. When the action starts, it feels as though it has been tacked on as an afterthought. No doubt it has; it's a McGuffin (the term Hitchcock coined to describe the matter that the film purported to be about). The arrival of the villains is nothing more than an excuse to bring Bond into the thing. When, half way through the novel, James Bond actually arrives, it is far from vintage stuff: a jaded and world-weary depiction of a jaded and world-weary 007.Had Fleming followed his apparent first instincts and written a novel about Vivienne Michel, leaving Bond out of things entirely, he might have done something creditable; it comes across in every line of the second half that he did not want to write Bond. As it is, The Spy who Loved Me ends up neither fish, flesh, fowl nor good red herring.Many years ago, charlatan traders used to sell "mermaids", fabricated from half a monkey carcase sewn onto half a fish. The Spy who Loved Me has a similar quality.(Incidentally, anyone concerned about the infamous "all women like semi-rape" line can rest easy. Placed in its context it is clear that it it is not referring to rape at all.)
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    the story begins on page 78, chapter 8. up util that point, we are given an extraordinary loooooong introduction to our heroine, whose name is Viv (I think). You can see the effect she had on me. Viv is a woman and this may be the best profile of a woman written by a man in the 20th century, but she still scomes out a bimbo. If it wasn't Fleming writing this thing, I'd have thrown the book against the wall and wsaid the heck with it. But with page 78, it gets good, as they say down south.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    3 stars is for the effort of making an attempt of telling Bond in a different way. Unfortunately as we all know Ian Fleming did not tap into the female sub-conscious particularly well and I was generally shocked with the comment about all women 'loving semi-rape'. Apart from that the story rattles along at a decent pace but it is no more than an afternoon's diversion. Not the best Bond book by a long way.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    The most telling thing about this book is that when Fleming sold the rights to the Bond series, he specifically mandated they could use no more of the book than it's title.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    In view of the entire series, The Spy Who Loved Me added some variety into the picture. While the variety was fun at times, and gave a new perspective to James Bond, by itself it was not that enjoyable. The majority of the book seemed to be establishing the main character, rather than telling an exciting story. When I read a Bond book it is because I want a story a) about Bond, and b) full of action. This work did not live up to my hopes, but is worth a read if you are a junkie for reading the entire series.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This one was my first James Bond novel. After more than a decade I re-read it yesterday and I have to say it is still a great novel.Highly recommended.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Bond no. 10, 1962; though Bond features in this story, it is told by the protagonist Vivienne Michel, who is rescued by Bond from murder attack, when her former employer tries to stage an assurance fraud. I can only guess that fleming followed an author's whim to try and show Bond in the eyes of a woman - who is, although courageously aiding Bond in mastering the crisis, nevertheless an adoring "Bond-girl" - so the books drips a bit of admiration...
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The Spy Who Loved Me is the oddball of the Bond stories. It's told from the point of view of the "Bond girl", and James doesn't even show up until we're more than halfway through the book. He doesn't save the world, just a girl who's being set up in an insurance scheme by some small-time hoodlums. No gadgets, no supervillain. But it's a pretty good read anyway. Not one of my favorite Bond adventures, but not my least favorite either.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Oh, Mr. Fleming. This was a very very new low for you. I love you and all, but where was James Bond in this book? I'll tell you where James Bond was. James Bond was making animalistic love to some girl in the shower. I read these books for the espionage, not so that I can read the "erotic romance" so to speak. I don't mind it - don't get me wrong - but a whole book about it fell quite quite short.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Fleming's macho fantasy writing really stumbles here where a female character is the narrator, and through her Fleming channels his one-dimensional views of women.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Quite unique among the Bond books, The Spy Who Loved Me benefits from diverting from the rest of the series with a change of formula, narrator, and placement of Bond within the story.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I was very tempted to give up reading this book, during Part1, as it was cringeworthy! But thankfully it picked up in the remainder two parts and Fleming returned to a more Bond-like story telling and this minimised his misguided foray into a "from her perspective" of emotions and feelings and got on with what he's good at, which is baddies and action
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Very unlike the other James Bond books. Bond only appears about 60% of the way through the book and the first half of the story could have been condensed into one chapter.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The first narrated text sounds interesting; in fact appetizing. I would wish to have an audio copy
    Frederick Kakembo
    Uganda
    fredkakembo@gmail.com
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I'm glad that I decided to go back and read this one, which I had previously skipped. Although Bond has an important role, this entry in the Bond series (#10) is quite different in style and content from the others. A first-person narrative of a girl just reaching adulthood in the early 1960s into whose life gangsters & violence (and eventually James Bond) suddenly erupt.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    By far the worst Bond novel I’ve read. Bravely this is told from the perspective of the heroine – but it means that Bond doesn’t appear until approximately ½ way in, by which time we are long since bored. It also includes the incredible line: “Every woman likes to be half-raped”.