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The Spy Who Loved Me

A James Bond Adventure

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The Spy Who Loved Me

By: Ian Fleming
Narrated by: Genevieve Gaunt
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About this listen

JAMES BOND AS YOU’VE NEVER SEEN HIM BEFORE

Unlike the rest of the books in Ian Fleming’s James Bond series, The Spy Who Loved Me is told from the perspective of a woman who fell for 007—and owes him her life.

Vivienne Michel, a precocious French Canadian raised in the United Kingdom, feels like a foreigner in every land. With only a supercharged Vespa and a handful of American dollars, she travels down winding roads into the pine forests of the Adirondacks. After stopping at the Dreamy Pines Motor Court and being coerced into caretaking at the vacant motel for the night, Viv opens the door to two armed mobsters and realizes being a woman alone is no easy task. But when a third stranger arrives—a confident Englishman with a keen sense for sizing things up—the tables are turned.

Still reeling in the wake of Operation Thunderball, Bond had planned for his jaunt through the Adirondacks to be a period of rest before his return to Europe. But that all changes when his tire goes flat in front of a certain motel…

©1962 Ian Fleming Publications Ltd (P)2025 Ian Fleming Publications Action & Adventure Classics Espionage Spies & Politics Thriller & Suspense World Literature
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Loved it. Unusual. Fleming really captured the complexity of a woman. Terrific narrator. Heart breaking voice.

Bond from a Woman's POV. Great story.

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If you know the Bond Movie (The Spy Whom loved Me) forget everything you know about it. This story is about a Canadian girl, Viv, who has some adventures in London and then gets caught up with gangsters in an American motel, where James arrives and saves her from the baddies. Viv is clearly the main protagonist (heroine) and James is far less efficient than in the movies & has to apologise for nearly getting them killed a couple of times.
The story is told by Viv and at least the first half of the book is only about Viv. It's a very unusual Ian Fleming book (read its Wikipedia page.) I don't think I have read (or listened to) a thriller written from a woman's perspective, but it IS definitely a thriller: the final fight scenes are a thrilling as any book I've read. (You probably shouldn't listen to them before trying to go to sleep.)
Really excellent performance from Genevieve who uses specific & realistic accents for every character. Her men's voices are just as convincing at the women's! I will have to search out more of her voice work.

Unexpected female perspective in a Bond book!

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I enjoyed this novel. It is out of character either the James Bond novels and would make a good B movie.
However, the film version is quite different.
The narrative, eloquently spoken by Genevieve Gaunt, runs along usual lines but as the “Hero” is James Bond, it attracts a dedicated audience.
The story is simple but it has its twists and turns and is a must for fans of the genre.

Towser T

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This is completely different from the other Bond stories. In many ways it's not a Bond story and perhaps the spy who appears near the climax should have been given a different name. It starts as a coming-of-age story about a naive Canadian convent girl, develops into a psychological contest and finishes with some traditional action. Very good.

Very different, but excellent

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Working my way through the Bond series, I thought this book, written from a female perspective (an interesting concept in itself given the time in which it was written!) would be fun. Sadly, it turned out to be tedious in the extreme, being an apparently endless history of the protagonist's love life. In the end, I got bored waiting for Bond to appear and I confess I couldn't bring myself to finish listening. Perhaps the last quarter was full of action and intrigue, like a true 007 story, but frankly in my opinion, life is too short to wait. I've moved on to the next book in the series.

Disappointingly tedious

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