The Spy Who Loved Me
The Spy Who Loved Me is one of the odder James Bond novels.
Young Canadian Vivienne Michel is alone in an Adirondack motel, waiting for the owner’s arrival to close for the season, with plans to move on. The sudden arrival of two violent thugs at the remote tourist trap puts Vivienne in immediate danger. Salvation arrives in the form of Bond, who happens on the motel after suffering a flat tire en route to Washington. Bond and Vivienne team up for a deadly contest of wills with the two thugs, with their survival at stake.
The Spy Who Loved Me is a bizarre beast (the movie that shares its name has absolutely no connection to the book). It’s among the shortest of the Bond books, barely novel-length. It’s one of the least action-intensive. And Bond is practically an afterthought in an entry in his own series.
Instead, Ian Fleming put the focus on Vivienne. Most of the first half consists of flashbacks to the prior few years of the young woman’s life, tracing how she came to be at that place at that time. Vivienne narrates the entire story and functions as the protagonist. Bond arrives about two-thirds through it, as an unlikely savior to help out the feisty but overmatched young woman. The final acts features some intense cat-and-mouse moments and a few beats of fiery action, but overall this plays as more of a character study.
Fortunately Vivienne proves to be an engaging lead, demonstrating some toughness and guts. She’s not an idle damsel in distress, so while Bond’s arrival tipped the contest more in her favor, she didn’t just stand around and wait to be saved. The apparent intent of minimizing Bond’s role was to take a more impressionistic view of the character, seeing him through Vivienne’s eyes during a brief, adrenaline-spiked interlude, distilling Bond down to his essential basics. It’s an interesting idea, even if the end result still feels more like an expanded short story than a fully realized novel.
As with its predecessors in the Bond series, The Spy Who Loved Me reflects its time and place and may be uncomfortable for some modern readers. Vivienne’s life plays out like a litany of “ways that men can mistreat women.” But Fleming also allowed her to be strong, overcoming the things that would hold her down. It’s not crucial to appreciating the overall Bond saga, but for completists, The Spy Who Loved Me is not a bad read.
