Separated into three distinct sections titled Me, Them, and Him, The Spy Who Loved Me centers on Vivienne "Viv" Michel, a young Canadian woman who narrates her own story and details her past love affairs particularly with two men, Derek Mallaby and her German boss, Kurt Rainer, by whom she eventually becomes pregnant. And unlike some works of art where appreciation for the vision grows over time, The Spy Who Loved Me remains perhaps Fleming’s most unsuccessful Bond novel both in terms of its artistic merit and commercial appeal. So poor was the reception, in fact, that Fleming himself went to great legal lengths to prevent reprints and subsequent editions in both the United Kingdom and the United States.įrom the novel’s length, scope, and structure to sexually explicit content, The Spy Who Loved Me is such a great departure from the Bond novels that preceded it that it’s not difficult to understand why critics, readers, and Fleming himself had significant reservations about its place in the Bond canon. Published in 1962, The Spy Who Loved Me is not only thought to be Fleming’s most drastic shift in his portrayal of both Bond and his titular spy’s adventures, but it’s also the most poorly received of Fleming’s Bond novels. This line, t aken from a letter James Bond creator and novelist Ian Fleming wrote to his publisher upon the release of his ninth Bond novel, The Spy Who Loved Me, is the perfect encapsulation of when an artist attempts to reinvent his art and fails.
“The experiment has obviously gone very much awry.” -Ian Fleming
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