Book Club - From Russia, With Love

[mi6-cafe-mod.livejournal.com]

Welcome to book club! Get your drinks, snacks, and any notes you have, and gather around for the discussion on the first half of From Russia, With Love! (If you're here and you're not sure where to find the book, check the resources post in the sidebar on the right!)

Book club is designed to be a place where you can go beyond the Bond movies and delve into another medium with our favorite secret agent. We have questions to help get things started, but there are no set discussions. If you have anything interesting that you want to discuss about your reading experience, comments on the text, or how reading the book might have changed your view on the characters in the movies, then do share!

Questions to get us started:
1) What did you think about Fleming's decision to start the book with ten chapters from the POV of various antagonists?
2) What are your feelings about these villains that Fleming shows us in so much detail? From Red Grant to Rosa Klebb to the Russian generals to the manufactured love interest Tatiana Romanova, Bond seems to have a formidable group of people arrayed against him!
3) What other things stood out to you in the first half of the book?

Remember, we're only talking about chapters 1-13 on this post, so be careful of potential spoilers. The whole-book discussion comes at the end of the month. Happy reading! 

Comments

[mia-zeklos.livejournal.com]

(I'm writing this from my phone as it's really late in the evening, so I apologize for any mistakes in advance. I was just eager to share my opinion)

1) What did you think about Fleming's decision to start the book with ten chapters from the POV of various antagonists?
At first I thought that it was a pretty neat idea to see Bond through someone else's eyes. I won't lie, Grant is scaring me to death, but he was an interesting character to read about. When things fully moved to Russia, though, I kind of started missing Bond's POV.

2) What are your feelings about these villains that Fleming shows us in so much detail? From Red Grant to Rosa Klebb to the Russian generals to the manufactured love interest Tatiana Romanova, Bond seems to have a formidable group of people arrayed against him!
I really like the setup of the Russian intelligence services, especially the way the people are described - how cold they are, the well-oiled machine that tries to control people they barely know of. It's all terribly raw and I felt kind of bad that someone so clearly unaccustomed to it all like Tatiana got thrown in the mix.

3) What other things stood out to you in the first half of the book?
I'm going to fawn over Bond again and I'm sorry, but I can't help myself. The entirety of his flight to Turkey was, in my opinion, a great character study of him - from the thoughts about what his past self would think of him to the panic about crashing. It was just so funny to me how he mocked his secretary for being superstitious and then his mind immediately jumps to that on the slightest turbulence because it's Friday the 13th and there are thirteen passengers on the plane. And the quote that really made me laugh from that bit?
"Should he tell Lil that perhaps she had almost been right? He decided that if he could find a rude enough postcard in Istanbul he would."

International man of mystery indeed.

[isthisrubble.livejournal.com]

2) I feel so sorry for Tatiana, she doesn't realise how thoroughly she's being used, and everything that happens to her is so awful

3) I do love the little bits where we get real insight into Bond - and it's nice to see that he can be a scaredy cat sometimes! what sort of postcard do you think he might have sent?

[mia-zeklos.livejournal.com]

2. Exactly. I don't think she completely realises what's going on but is pretty eager to please, and I'm kind of scared of the outcome of this when it comes to her.

3. I can just imagine him strolling along the souvenir shops in Istanbul looking for something appropriate for the occasion that can say 'you were right' while also not really admitting it. Sometimes I just don't know why I find him so likeable.

[isthisrubble.livejournal.com]

3: he probably couldn't write anything specific so he might just send her one that's got a picture of a naked statue on it, and write "you were right" on the back.
Lil: *tries to work out which of the many things she might be right about*

Castillon02

[(Anonymous)]

OMG I love this!

Castillon02

[(Anonymous)]

2) Yes, I think Tatiana is definitely being presented as a sympathetic character--a pawn in a game where she's not aware of what the full stakes are, and a strong contrast to the higher-ups in SMERSH and the Soviet government.

One thing that I grinned about with regards to Tatiana was how Fleming kept comparing her to Garbo, because it reminded me of 1) how Fleming compared Bond to a celebrity (Hoagy Carmichael, who bears a suspicious resemblance to Fleming himself) as well in order to get his appearance across to the audience, and 2) Scioscribe's "Dramatic Arts," in which Spectre is a fictionalized report that Bond has written, and which contains this line from M: "You’ve also described this woman, twice, as ‘looking like Monica Bellucci,’ which I didn’t need to know.” :D

3) Yes, I love getting these little moments from Bond! I was definitely entertained by Bond's moment of in-flight superstition as well, and liked learning about his 'hurricane room' and things like that. (And of course Bond brings out the hurricane room for a bit of turbulence? And not, say, all the times he's been taken captive or whatever? Oh, Bond!)

Re: Castillon02

[mia-zeklos.livejournal.com]

2. Some things never change, apparently, and that's the constant comparisons to current stars. ;D And that fic was just gold, because I loved the idea of Bond trying his hand in writing. ;D

3. That's exactly what I thought, too. Torture? Pain? No problem, but it takes him a turbulence to go into the 'this is where I die' territory.

Castillon02

[(Anonymous)]

1) I was intrigued. I wonder if he saw that people enjoyed/didn't mind the intro with the baddie in 'Diamonds Are Forever,' and then thought, "All right! First experiment was a success, now it's TIME TO GET WILD." It was interesting to see the generals and the machinery of Bond's enemies, and to get into the POVs of the people working against him--pretty much the opposite of seeing Bond go after nameless mooks. And after so long with SMERSH just being vaguely menacing in the background, it's pretty gratifying to know more about it!

2) I think that Red Grant's introduction in particular was effective at making him an intimidating nemesis, drawing parallels between him and Bond, and setting up a kind of 'fight of the century' atmosphere: "Assassin vs. Assassin! Who will REIGN SUPREME in the theater of global espionage?"

Rosa Klebb is super creepy; not v. impressed by the whole homophobic aspects to her character (or the ace-phobic aspect to Grant's), but I really like that she's this terrifying villain who's risen to become one of the most powerful people in the government. Yay for pants-shittingly scary lady antagonists.

Poor Tatiana! I hope she doesn't end up dead, as a lot of Bond's love interests seem to do. Her determination to do well even in the face of her fear makes me feel for her a lot!

3) Speaking of love interests: YES, I was so pleased to know that Tiffany Case dumped Bond's ass! You know, as opposed to being fridged. It's almost like a Bond who had gotten antsy without any field missions isn't super pleasant to be around, haha--or like an assassin who gets depressed if he hasn't been in a life-or-death situation relatively recently isn't quite the 'marriage material' that Tiffany might have had in mind. In any case--it's refreshing to have Fleming make room for the next Bond girl without killing off the old one!

I really liked the postcard line too! The image of Bond perusing postcards to find the rudest/dirtiest one is pretty cute, assuming that Lil would get a laugh out of it too.

Lots of great Bond moments. Loved how he felt gripped by sloth and all depressed because he hadn't seen any fieldwork lately, and because Tiffany had dumped him. And I really enjoyed his uncertainty when it came to "pimping for England." It was like a scrapbook moment--"Bond's first honeypot mission," haha.

The plane trip felt so familiar while at the same time gifting us with those nice new moments about his character (introspection! superstition! hurricane room! yay!). Bond started commenting on the airplane food (for once not too lackluster) and boozing it up on his lay-over and I was like, "Yes, this is the Bond formula/characterization to which I have grown accustomed."

Re: Castillon02

[mia-zeklos.livejournal.com]

2. Rosa made me so vaguely uncomfortable the entire time she was around and I could never quite place why, to be honest. That was definitely part of it.

3. I also find that kind of funny - how he'd apparently got all restless and probably highly annoying and that was why she'd left - and that Bond, even when presented with a really suspicious/dodgy mission could only think, 'Oh thank God I've got something to do now'.

Castillon02

[(Anonymous)]

2) I definitely have complicated feelings about Rosa Klebb that I'm still trying to figure out (she almost seems like a caricature of a character with her old, ugly, faux-maternal evil and non-heterosexuality--and of course the source of Bond's angst and troubles is a woman?) But I think we haven't had a powerful woman villain before, so it's also neat to have her be the primary antagonist.

I feel as though Dench!M is like the anti-Klebb. Powerful and in charge, old but respected, makes difficult moral choices but believes she's doing the best possible thing, not really maternal except inasmuch as people like Silva project their mom issues onto her... What an A+ addition to the Bond-verse.

Re: Castillon02

[isthisrubble.livejournal.com]

"Assassin vs. Assassin! Who will REIGN SUPREME in the theater of global espionage?" nice, someone should put that on a poster

arrives at book club a month late with starbucks

[isthisrubble.livejournal.com]

1) What did you think about Fleming's decision to start the book with ten chapters from the POV of various antagonists?
I love this a lot - world building! background info! context! useless bits and pieces I can use in fics?

2) What are your feelings about these villains that Fleming shows us in so much detail? From Red Grant to Rosa Klebb to the Russian generals to the manufactured love interest Tatiana Romanova, Bond seems to have a formidable group of people arrayed against him!
it's a crazy plan, but the reasoning behind it is sound, and they so nearly got away with it - it's clear these people know exactly what they're doing. they are formidable, but the infighting and resentment is a bit laughable, I think

3) What other things stood out to you in the first half of the book?
M's awkwardness about Bond's love life gives me life,and so does May, who's scottish, joy - it's like Fleming subconsciously attaches Bond to scottish things even though at this point he wasn't canonically from there yet