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 show more 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.) show less
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 show more 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.) show less
Daphne du Maurier was probably incapable of writing a bad book. Rebecca was one of the best ever written and a harsh yardstick to use but the truth is that this falls really a long way short.
There is no one to excel du Maurier when it comes to overlaying an ordinary domestic scene with a tint of menace but there is nothing of the sort here.
Briefly, Dick Young is an old college friend of Professor Magnus Lane. In return for the use of his Cornish home as a summer retreat for Young and his family, Lane has prevailed upon his friend to test a new drug that appears to have the effect of enabling the user to witness events of the past at first hand. In Young's case, this proves to be the 14th Century. So we follow the progress of his stay in Cornwall in the present day, interleaved with what he witnesses in the past.
Of course, it is a device of du Maurier's to tell a straight-forward story and then throw a box of spanners into the works. In "The House on the Strand", though, the use of alternating narratives leads to this first stage being dragged out too long and the whole thing proceeds at a snail's pace for better part of two-thirds of the book. The novel desperately needs some of that trade-mark du Maurier menace; without that tension, it starts to drag, badly.
In the last hundred pages, when the spanners hit, the pace picks up and we get some tension and something altogether more like we've been expecting from du Maurier.
In fact, the tale ends quite well - not very well, show more but quite well - but I suspect that many readers will have consigned the book to the jumble sale box long before they get that far. show less
There is no one to excel du Maurier when it comes to overlaying an ordinary domestic scene with a tint of menace but there is nothing of the sort here.
Briefly, Dick Young is an old college friend of Professor Magnus Lane. In return for the use of his Cornish home as a summer retreat for Young and his family, Lane has prevailed upon his friend to test a new drug that appears to have the effect of enabling the user to witness events of the past at first hand. In Young's case, this proves to be the 14th Century. So we follow the progress of his stay in Cornwall in the present day, interleaved with what he witnesses in the past.
Of course, it is a device of du Maurier's to tell a straight-forward story and then throw a box of spanners into the works. In "The House on the Strand", though, the use of alternating narratives leads to this first stage being dragged out too long and the whole thing proceeds at a snail's pace for better part of two-thirds of the book. The novel desperately needs some of that trade-mark du Maurier menace; without that tension, it starts to drag, badly.
In the last hundred pages, when the spanners hit, the pace picks up and we get some tension and something altogether more like we've been expecting from du Maurier.
In fact, the tale ends quite well - not very well, show more but quite well - but I suspect that many readers will have consigned the book to the jumble sale box long before they get that far. show less
'I've always thought is one of the greatest stories of the war...the way those boys went in, knowing what was coming to them...'
In point of fact, Frederick E. Smith wasn't talking about the St Nazaire raid, but his words sum up my feelings about it.
A few years ago, Jeremy Clarkson presented a documentary on BBC with the same title as this book in which he declared that the raid was all but forgotten. I feel the same now as I felt at the time: that he overstated the case. To those of my generation who grew up on a diet of The Victor and The Warlord and Airfix kits, the Campbeltown and St Nazaire live on; and the other day, I heard that Hollywood was planning a film based on the raid. Nonetheless, Clarkson has a point, St Nazaire is not as well remembered as, say, the Dams Raid.
It certainly should be. It is one of the epic coups de mains in military history. Executed on a shoe-string, with largely unsuitable equipment and not enough of that, a major strategic aim - the destruction of the Normandie dry dock in an effort to neutralize the battleship Tirpitz - was accomplished, in large part, through clever improvisation and extraordinary fighting spirit. It was, too, an almost uniquely British operation; scarcely more than a handful of Dominion fighting men were involved.
With a story such as this, criticism of the book is almost superfluous; only the most inarticulate troglodyte could fail to produce a stirring account. Phillips is certainly much more than this. For instance, show more one important point is that he remembers that the fighting men are also people and he tells us something about them as he introduces them. He describes both the planning and the execution of the raid and wisely elects to eschew a rigidly chronological account of the action, but deals with the efforts of individual fighting parties and boats in a sensible order. Inevitably, with an account of a chaotic battle there are points at which the reader will lose track of the narrative; there are enough maps and diagrams, though, to guide him through, though those are the points when one regrets the curious omission of an index.
Overall, though, this is a comprehensive and comprehensible account of one in the outstanding actions of the Second World War. show less
In point of fact, Frederick E. Smith wasn't talking about the St Nazaire raid, but his words sum up my feelings about it.
A few years ago, Jeremy Clarkson presented a documentary on BBC with the same title as this book in which he declared that the raid was all but forgotten. I feel the same now as I felt at the time: that he overstated the case. To those of my generation who grew up on a diet of The Victor and The Warlord and Airfix kits, the Campbeltown and St Nazaire live on; and the other day, I heard that Hollywood was planning a film based on the raid. Nonetheless, Clarkson has a point, St Nazaire is not as well remembered as, say, the Dams Raid.
It certainly should be. It is one of the epic coups de mains in military history. Executed on a shoe-string, with largely unsuitable equipment and not enough of that, a major strategic aim - the destruction of the Normandie dry dock in an effort to neutralize the battleship Tirpitz - was accomplished, in large part, through clever improvisation and extraordinary fighting spirit. It was, too, an almost uniquely British operation; scarcely more than a handful of Dominion fighting men were involved.
With a story such as this, criticism of the book is almost superfluous; only the most inarticulate troglodyte could fail to produce a stirring account. Phillips is certainly much more than this. For instance, show more one important point is that he remembers that the fighting men are also people and he tells us something about them as he introduces them. He describes both the planning and the execution of the raid and wisely elects to eschew a rigidly chronological account of the action, but deals with the efforts of individual fighting parties and boats in a sensible order. Inevitably, with an account of a chaotic battle there are points at which the reader will lose track of the narrative; there are enough maps and diagrams, though, to guide him through, though those are the points when one regrets the curious omission of an index.
Overall, though, this is a comprehensive and comprehensible account of one in the outstanding actions of the Second World War. show less
I remember reading this first in March 1975; I was eleven. Back then I was young enough to be very much impressed by the film. In the intervening 37 years, my regard for the film has waned but reading the book for the umpteenth time, it still captivates. Why? Because the film is a routine actioner but Smith knew what every great writer knows; that the books that last are about people.
There is some stuff in here about a raid on a secret German installation in Norway, but who cares? That's just the McGuffin, anyway. Smith sets out his stall in the first chapter:
“…Folks want to hear the real stuff - how those boys felt during their training, the girls they had, what they let out when they were drunk, how they felt on the last day…. The human stuff!”
That's what's in this novel.
This is a story about people. Principally, it is a story about a light bomber squadron of the RAF in the Second World War. It is a portrait of the bizarre existence bomber crews led; in the pub with the locals one evening, in the heat of battle next day, back to the pub (if they survived) in the evening. It looks at the terrible attrition suffered by squadrons (I believe the 2 Group of Bomber Command sustained a casualty rate second only to the U-boats). There are pilots from the Dominions (as there must have been in every Bomber Command squadron) and from America (not an anachronism; it was only the US fighter pilots who transferred en masse to the USAAF in 1942). It looks at the intense bonds show more that formed between fighting men and the psychological costs of war. Of course, all this has been done since, many times, so that much of it is now clichéd. Yet this was one of the first books of the kind and remains one of the best.
Above all, this book makes you care. I am put in mind of Douglas Adams' explanation for the whale in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He reminds us of the TV series Cannon in which there was always one character whose sole function was to be pointlessly killed, without anyone apparently giving a damn. Adams' riposte to this was the whale, whose sole function was to be pointlessly killed, but Adams determined that he would make the reader care about the creature. In a world of the video-game mentality, where characters in both books and films are killed off wholesale without any regrets, 633 Squadron is all the more welcome because a lot of people die in this book, but Smith will make you care about them. show less
There is some stuff in here about a raid on a secret German installation in Norway, but who cares? That's just the McGuffin, anyway. Smith sets out his stall in the first chapter:
“…Folks want to hear the real stuff - how those boys felt during their training, the girls they had, what they let out when they were drunk, how they felt on the last day…. The human stuff!”
That's what's in this novel.
This is a story about people. Principally, it is a story about a light bomber squadron of the RAF in the Second World War. It is a portrait of the bizarre existence bomber crews led; in the pub with the locals one evening, in the heat of battle next day, back to the pub (if they survived) in the evening. It looks at the terrible attrition suffered by squadrons (I believe the 2 Group of Bomber Command sustained a casualty rate second only to the U-boats). There are pilots from the Dominions (as there must have been in every Bomber Command squadron) and from America (not an anachronism; it was only the US fighter pilots who transferred en masse to the USAAF in 1942). It looks at the intense bonds show more that formed between fighting men and the psychological costs of war. Of course, all this has been done since, many times, so that much of it is now clichéd. Yet this was one of the first books of the kind and remains one of the best.
Above all, this book makes you care. I am put in mind of Douglas Adams' explanation for the whale in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He reminds us of the TV series Cannon in which there was always one character whose sole function was to be pointlessly killed, without anyone apparently giving a damn. Adams' riposte to this was the whale, whose sole function was to be pointlessly killed, but Adams determined that he would make the reader care about the creature. In a world of the video-game mentality, where characters in both books and films are killed off wholesale without any regrets, 633 Squadron is all the more welcome because a lot of people die in this book, but Smith will make you care about them. show less
To begin with an observation. This is not a history of the Second World War. It is rather an examination of many of the instances of mental myopia, wishful thinking and blind stupidity that cost both sides dearly in that conflict. Inevitably, to place these in context, there are large chunks of historical detail that form the greater part of the work. Moreover, it calls a halt in early 1942. This means both that the bulk of the work deals with the war between Britain and her Empire and the Axis and that the United States gets off pretty lightly. There is no mention, for example, of the bloodbath of Omaha beach, caused in large part by Bradley's refusal to accept British specialist armour, and the massacre of shipping off the American Eastern Seaboard, largely due to Admiral King's errors, receives only a passing mention in the summing up.
For that part of the war that the book does cover, Deighton bars no holds in his exposé of the mental deficiencies of the antagonists. It is a fine piece of historical analysis. Nevertheless, it loses one star in my rating for the number of silly errors of fact that creep in, errors that any reader with a good knowledge of the subject matter will immediately spot (as the editor should have done), and the rare occasions when he lets his prejudices get the better of him; the most striking example is in the account of the sinking of the Bismarck, when he accepts the idea that British gunfire failed to sink the battleship but then draws the show more conclusion that she sank because her crew scuttled her, ignoring the six or more very large torpedo holes that were calculated to be more than adequate to sink her by the 2001 expedition and were certainly there at the time of the Ballard expedition that Deighton quotes.
Nonetheless, this is remains a powerful and important work and more of it than I was comfortable with echoes on in current events. show less
For that part of the war that the book does cover, Deighton bars no holds in his exposé of the mental deficiencies of the antagonists. It is a fine piece of historical analysis. Nevertheless, it loses one star in my rating for the number of silly errors of fact that creep in, errors that any reader with a good knowledge of the subject matter will immediately spot (as the editor should have done), and the rare occasions when he lets his prejudices get the better of him; the most striking example is in the account of the sinking of the Bismarck, when he accepts the idea that British gunfire failed to sink the battleship but then draws the show more conclusion that she sank because her crew scuttled her, ignoring the six or more very large torpedo holes that were calculated to be more than adequate to sink her by the 2001 expedition and were certainly there at the time of the Ballard expedition that Deighton quotes.
Nonetheless, this is remains a powerful and important work and more of it than I was comfortable with echoes on in current events. show less
Q: Why, more than 140 years+ after his death is Charles Dickens still regarded as the greatest novelist the English language has ever seen?
A: Because that is what he is.
Nicholas Nickleby is a good illustration. I set myself to finish this - 776 pages in this edition - in a month; in the event it took twelve days. On most days, I only put it down because my eyes were throbbing from the small print.
Of course, 776 pages is a lot of book but there is a lot of story; a lot happens to a lot of people. The reader must be given a chance to get to know these people if he is to a give a damn what happens to them. Dickens gives us this time; it is part of his art. He takes time, too, to describe people and places; remember that he wrote in the days before television, or newsreels, or even cheap picture-books. If he wanted the reader to know what something looked like, he had to describe it.
To many, in this world where one death is a tragedy but a million deaths is a sound-bite, such a deliberate approach to story-telling will prove too taxing. To those with a more traditional attention span, it must simply add to the experience.
And experience it is. Nickleby loses nothing with the passing of years. Dickens dealt, as do all great writers, with human nature and the real world. At root, neither changes. We are still afflicted with businessmen who know no morality beyond the p&l account; educationalists who substitute cant for understanding and choose to forget the humanity of their show more charges; gold diggers, cheats and frauds; and parents who care nothing for their children.
Nicholas Nickleby was a page-turner in 1838 and it is a page-turner today. It has, by turns, villainy and romance, comedy and tragedy, sudden death and new beginnings. Truly, all human life is here. show less
A: Because that is what he is.
Nicholas Nickleby is a good illustration. I set myself to finish this - 776 pages in this edition - in a month; in the event it took twelve days. On most days, I only put it down because my eyes were throbbing from the small print.
Of course, 776 pages is a lot of book but there is a lot of story; a lot happens to a lot of people. The reader must be given a chance to get to know these people if he is to a give a damn what happens to them. Dickens gives us this time; it is part of his art. He takes time, too, to describe people and places; remember that he wrote in the days before television, or newsreels, or even cheap picture-books. If he wanted the reader to know what something looked like, he had to describe it.
To many, in this world where one death is a tragedy but a million deaths is a sound-bite, such a deliberate approach to story-telling will prove too taxing. To those with a more traditional attention span, it must simply add to the experience.
And experience it is. Nickleby loses nothing with the passing of years. Dickens dealt, as do all great writers, with human nature and the real world. At root, neither changes. We are still afflicted with businessmen who know no morality beyond the p&l account; educationalists who substitute cant for understanding and choose to forget the humanity of their show more charges; gold diggers, cheats and frauds; and parents who care nothing for their children.
Nicholas Nickleby was a page-turner in 1838 and it is a page-turner today. It has, by turns, villainy and romance, comedy and tragedy, sudden death and new beginnings. Truly, all human life is here. show less