I'm Hooked

From Russia With Love is the first Bond novel I have read since my high school days and honestly I could not stop reading it. Every chapter had literary hooks at the end which made it so I couldn't put the book down. If I did I couldn't stop thinking about what would happen next. There was a time today where I just sat down at a bench on campus and read till the end of the book, it was that good. And I know I've seen the movies a billion times, but the books stray enough from the plot to keep me interested. Bond gets hurt in these books. He isn't the superhero shown in films. He bleeds, he gets shot, he is nearly beaten to death. You actually fear for his life. Almost every chapter in this book seemed to raise my fears about what would happen to Bond. Especially these two sentences at the end of the chapter entitled "The Killing Bottle": "The bullet, homing on Bond's heart, flashed over its two quiet yards. Bond pitched forward on to the floor and lay sprawled under the funeral violet light." Even the end of the book has a HUGE hook. Big enough that I am now buying the next Bond book to find out how Bond will get out the situation he is in. Reading this book has truly helped me to understand how a great author can use plot and language to produce something very entertaining to read. Five out of five stars James.

"His gun spoke twice from the hip".

I have mentioned before how much I love Ian Fleming's use of language to describe settings and characters in a novel. But this last chapter I read in From Russia With Love really helped me to see the skill he had in building tension. The chapter started with James Bond being invited to dinner with a gypsy tribe. The scene intensified when it was announced that two gypsy girls were to fight it out to the death over a man. As if the declaration of their fight wasn't terrifying enough, the author was able to provide us with a description of the two fighters that seemed almost like they were being introduced into a boxing ring. The actual fight was violent and harsh, no gory detail was spared. The fight was building to a climax when an explosion rang out. The gypsy tribe was being attacked by a rival gang of Bulgars. During the skirmish Bond is almost killed. Then the fight ends with the Bulgars retreating from the gypsy camp. Things slow down and Bond is left to reflect on what has just happened. Exposition, rising action, climax, and denouement all tightly packed in one chapter.

"A Labour of Love"

"It was her disgust and her contempt for a person who could live in the middle of such a smell that helped her look down into the yellowish eyes that stared at her through the square glass panes. Nothing could be read in them. They were receiving eyes, not giving eyes. They slowly moved all over her, like camera lenses, taking her in."

Tatiana and Colonel Klebb as depicted in the film version of From Russia With Love

Those eyes belonged to Colonel Klebb, one of the top ranking officials for SMERSH; which is a Russian abbreviation for 'Death to Spies'. Earlier in the book Colonel Klebb's character was described as cold and calculating. She put fear into the hearts of those she interrogated, even men. She used those eyes to observe the little body movements given by her subjects and then used that information to construct a verbal assault designed to extract information. She was good at what she did and the blonde girl pictured above, known as Tatiana, was in the gaze of those eyes. I loved how the author used imagery and comparisons to describe the eyes of Colonel Klebb. The intensity of their encounter was heightened because of this effect. Noticing descriptions like this in the fiction we read can help us imagine the characters and world that that they live in. That gives us much more enjoyment as readers because we are taken into the perspectives of those involved in the story and we feel a little bit of what they are feeling. A good author puts vivid descriptions like these throughout his/her books so that we as readers don't just hear a good story, but we go through an experience.

"The Slaughterer"

Now I remember why I loved reading the Bond books along with the movies. After my post last week I decided to go and buy one of the Bond books I hadn't read yet. I bought From Russia with Love which is considered by many to not only be the best book in the series, but the best movie as well. It has a fairly simple plot in comparison to other Bond escapades with the Soviet lektor decoder machine acting as the macguffin for the story. Bond goes on a wild goose chase for this device and runs into great trouble along the way. I have been re watching the Bond movies with my roommate as he hasn't seen many of them before and we watched From Russia Love partly because I wanted to compare the novel and the movie directly. I love the movie, particularly the scene above where Bond faces Red Grant an assassin that could be Bond's match in physicality and fighting skill.In the movie Grant is simply described as a psychotic homicidal killer.
But in the book we learn so much more