Evil Comes Gift Wrapped
jetsetwilly
Liverpool, UKPosts: 1,048MI6 Agent
I should start this with a personal note: my boyfriend is rubbish at buying Christmas presents. I am probably the only 29 year old who still has to compose a Christmas list to give his other half a figgy pudding about what to buy him. I don't mind; this means I get exactly what I want, instead of some appalling flights of imagination. However, try as he might, he just can't resist trying to be imaginative every once in a while, which is why, for Christmas this year, I got The Moneypenny Diaries by (my mistake: "edited" by) Kate Westbrook.
I can understand the mental process that went through The Wife's mind. There he is, blundering around a bookstore - not his natural environment at the best of times - and he spots the word "Moneypenny" on a cover. "Aha! Something I have heard of!" he thinks, elbowing an old woman away from the Dan Brown display and therefore saving her several hours of her ever diminishing life. "Moneypenny is from James Bond, and through nine years of subtle intelligence, I have managed to discern that my other half is rather keen on James Bond. Ergo, I have discovered the perfect present, and therefore it is a wonderful, imaginative gift, and therefore he will think I am skill and ace and not visit the miseries that I did upon him last year."
Sadly, while The BF is a lovely person, his knowledge of the world of 007 is somewhat limited. Despite nine years of careful indoctrination, he still hasn't quite grasped the difference between Thunderball and Goldfinger, and the Roger Moore films all blur into one with him. (Timothy Dalton is another country, and despite sitting in the cinema and watching them with me, he still maintains that Elliott Carver was the best thing about both TWINE and DAD. Sometimes within the same argument). As such, he completely missed my utter disdain for the whole Moneypenny Diaries concept, and particularly my hatred for the Christian name Jane for the Divine Miss M. So what else could I do on our Saviour's Day than smile and nod and diligently place Ms Westbrook's magnum opus on the shelf under "W" where, with any luck, it could quietly collect dust until I could sneak it into the Oxfam Book Bank. And no-one would ever know except for me and the readers of a certain internet forum when I wrote about it eight months later.
Anyway. Fortunately for The Other Half's imagination, I have a long commute to work every morning. And in one of my habitual faffs about what to read on the train in the morning ("Shall I finally have a crack at the James Joyce? Or shall I just grab a Martin Amis again, and actually enjoy reading a book?") I managed to grab The Moneypenny Diaries.
Of course, I felt violated. The book is about three milimetres away from having a piece of ribbon in it to keep your place. And the introduction, about "Aunt Jane" and her "shocking secrets", was so twee I expected it to come with shortbread and an Uncle McFee.
But I started the novel and... Yes, reader, I enjoyed it. Kate Westbrook has "done" her Fleming, and by that I mean the novels, and not the films. She knows that Honey had a broken nose, that Solitaire's real name was Simone Latrelle, that Sir Miles lived at Quarterdeck and took the Tube home if it was raining. It frankly makes a nonsense of the alleged contrempts between her publishers and the Fleming estate, because if she was writing all this and didn't think she would raise their hackles, then she is a very naive lady indeed.
I gained two significant pleasures from this novel, which is two more than I gained from Doublesh*t. The first is that I got to see the "other side" of Bond's home adventures. The Blofeld Trilogy sees more SIS action than any of the previous novels, and by setting her novel between the end of OHMSS and the beginning of YOLT, Westbrook manages to fill in the gaps in what is a significant event in 007's life. If we look at Fleming - and this is not to denigrate either novel - but Bond loses his wife at the end of one novel and by about chapter 4 in the next is over it. Westbrook fills in the gaps using a figure we care about, and she does an excellent job. She also has the advantage that by writing in Moneypenny's voice, she doesn't have the burden of the Fleming Sweep hanging over her head, that enormous rug that was pulled out from under both Gardner and Benson.
The second thing I enjoyed about this novel was the very small, very private drama of Moneypenny's possible security breach. Her constant flirtations with 007 become exposed in this book as a woman who craved human affection and love, and the novel exploits this. The intimation that Moneypenny - Britain's last line of defence - should even consider turning double is gripping and fascinating. For all Bond's conquest of megalomaniacs in underground lairs, mentions of a lonely spinster's temptations in the hand of a handsome foreign agent have a potency and tragedy about them which fascinated me.
It's not perfect. The insertion of Bond-lore reaches almost Benson like levels at some point, with Moneypenny having fond memories of girls she could only have known about through jealous perusals of files. And the concept that Moneypenny could have aided the Cuban Missile Crisis once is barely believable; that M would give his secretary a second attempt at infilatrating hostile territory strains the credibility levels beyond breaking point.
But as I closed the novel, I couldn't help but think of what was to come. At its end, 007 is missing, presumed dead, comensurate with the events of YOLT. That means we have his return from Soviet Russia and assassination attempt on M to come. The idea that these huge concepts, which were unfortunately glossed over by Fleming, will be expanded is frankly tremendously exciting to me. So long as Moneypenny doesn't have to pick up a gun again, I will be happy. The idea that we will finally find out what was going on behind the image of Moneypenny with her knuckles clenched to her mouth as Tanner pulls a comatose Bond from the room is wonderfully intriguing. That is what I want from the Moneypenny Diaries; I want the human face of 007, one he can never show, to be exposed on the page for me, fractured through a character I love.
By the way I still haven't told Mrs Jetset that I liked the book. In long-term relationships, you just can't bargain away that kind of advantage. And besides which, I want a car for Christmas this year
I can understand the mental process that went through The Wife's mind. There he is, blundering around a bookstore - not his natural environment at the best of times - and he spots the word "Moneypenny" on a cover. "Aha! Something I have heard of!" he thinks, elbowing an old woman away from the Dan Brown display and therefore saving her several hours of her ever diminishing life. "Moneypenny is from James Bond, and through nine years of subtle intelligence, I have managed to discern that my other half is rather keen on James Bond. Ergo, I have discovered the perfect present, and therefore it is a wonderful, imaginative gift, and therefore he will think I am skill and ace and not visit the miseries that I did upon him last year."
Sadly, while The BF is a lovely person, his knowledge of the world of 007 is somewhat limited. Despite nine years of careful indoctrination, he still hasn't quite grasped the difference between Thunderball and Goldfinger, and the Roger Moore films all blur into one with him. (Timothy Dalton is another country, and despite sitting in the cinema and watching them with me, he still maintains that Elliott Carver was the best thing about both TWINE and DAD. Sometimes within the same argument). As such, he completely missed my utter disdain for the whole Moneypenny Diaries concept, and particularly my hatred for the Christian name Jane for the Divine Miss M. So what else could I do on our Saviour's Day than smile and nod and diligently place Ms Westbrook's magnum opus on the shelf under "W" where, with any luck, it could quietly collect dust until I could sneak it into the Oxfam Book Bank. And no-one would ever know except for me and the readers of a certain internet forum when I wrote about it eight months later.
Anyway. Fortunately for The Other Half's imagination, I have a long commute to work every morning. And in one of my habitual faffs about what to read on the train in the morning ("Shall I finally have a crack at the James Joyce? Or shall I just grab a Martin Amis again, and actually enjoy reading a book?") I managed to grab The Moneypenny Diaries.
Of course, I felt violated. The book is about three milimetres away from having a piece of ribbon in it to keep your place. And the introduction, about "Aunt Jane" and her "shocking secrets", was so twee I expected it to come with shortbread and an Uncle McFee.
But I started the novel and... Yes, reader, I enjoyed it. Kate Westbrook has "done" her Fleming, and by that I mean the novels, and not the films. She knows that Honey had a broken nose, that Solitaire's real name was Simone Latrelle, that Sir Miles lived at Quarterdeck and took the Tube home if it was raining. It frankly makes a nonsense of the alleged contrempts between her publishers and the Fleming estate, because if she was writing all this and didn't think she would raise their hackles, then she is a very naive lady indeed.
I gained two significant pleasures from this novel, which is two more than I gained from Doublesh*t. The first is that I got to see the "other side" of Bond's home adventures. The Blofeld Trilogy sees more SIS action than any of the previous novels, and by setting her novel between the end of OHMSS and the beginning of YOLT, Westbrook manages to fill in the gaps in what is a significant event in 007's life. If we look at Fleming - and this is not to denigrate either novel - but Bond loses his wife at the end of one novel and by about chapter 4 in the next is over it. Westbrook fills in the gaps using a figure we care about, and she does an excellent job. She also has the advantage that by writing in Moneypenny's voice, she doesn't have the burden of the Fleming Sweep hanging over her head, that enormous rug that was pulled out from under both Gardner and Benson.
The second thing I enjoyed about this novel was the very small, very private drama of Moneypenny's possible security breach. Her constant flirtations with 007 become exposed in this book as a woman who craved human affection and love, and the novel exploits this. The intimation that Moneypenny - Britain's last line of defence - should even consider turning double is gripping and fascinating. For all Bond's conquest of megalomaniacs in underground lairs, mentions of a lonely spinster's temptations in the hand of a handsome foreign agent have a potency and tragedy about them which fascinated me.
It's not perfect. The insertion of Bond-lore reaches almost Benson like levels at some point, with Moneypenny having fond memories of girls she could only have known about through jealous perusals of files. And the concept that Moneypenny could have aided the Cuban Missile Crisis once is barely believable; that M would give his secretary a second attempt at infilatrating hostile territory strains the credibility levels beyond breaking point.
But as I closed the novel, I couldn't help but think of what was to come. At its end, 007 is missing, presumed dead, comensurate with the events of YOLT. That means we have his return from Soviet Russia and assassination attempt on M to come. The idea that these huge concepts, which were unfortunately glossed over by Fleming, will be expanded is frankly tremendously exciting to me. So long as Moneypenny doesn't have to pick up a gun again, I will be happy. The idea that we will finally find out what was going on behind the image of Moneypenny with her knuckles clenched to her mouth as Tanner pulls a comatose Bond from the room is wonderfully intriguing. That is what I want from the Moneypenny Diaries; I want the human face of 007, one he can never show, to be exposed on the page for me, fractured through a character I love.
By the way I still haven't told Mrs Jetset that I liked the book. In long-term relationships, you just can't bargain away that kind of advantage. And besides which, I want a car for Christmas this year
Comments
As for being the only adult to have to still write down what they want for gifts - get in line. Although now I not only have to write my own list but compile and assign everyone elses lists.
You've peaked my interest which is more than any review of the Young Bonds has done and something I thought impossible with the Moneypenny Diaries. I don't think I'll put it on any list though, I'd rather not have such incriminating evidence in writing. B-)
MBE
Oh well,it's only money,right?
Incidentally,CBn has an excellent interview with author Samantha Weinberg aka "Kate Westbrook",regarding her first novel in The Moneypenny Diaries trilogy.
She answers a lot of questions--including how these books came about,why she decided to name Moneypenny "Jane", and also provides an explanation for Moneypenny's background.Pretty much everything Jetset touches on.Definitely worth a glance-IMHO.And as Jetset notes,Ms.Weinberg's definitely a fan of the Ian Fleming novels.:)
In case anyone has a difficult time finding it at the CBn website, there's a direct link to this interview in the "Moneypenny Diaries" article on Wikipedia.
Like you I disliked the premise of this book, as well as the name 'Jane'. I rather hoped Miss Moneypenny was a 'Myrtle' or a 'Gertrude' or something horrific like that. I should, however, really have a look at The Moneypenny Diaries to see if I too will be converted, although it will have to wait as I have yet to read Higson's novels.
Nonetheless, brilliant post.
I gave this more thought last night than anybody really should, and I kind of thought Jane suited her.. Although if her first name had been something horrible, it would have validated the fact that everybody refers to her by her last name
I hope your right jetset
You might wanna be more specific however, about the car you want.
@merseytart
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Hello fellows.
Yes Nappy, I ride on the other Aston Martin - you know, the comfortable, tidy one, with no rubbish in the ashtray and a pleasing minty scent throughout. And which involves sodomy. Did you never notice my sig?!?!
And Dan007, thank you for your very kind words about While England's Dreaming. I am writing it still, at a very slow pace, but I have a whole lot of very unpleasant things happening in my life at the mo which have meant I haven't had the time to devote to it as I would like. Besides which, I am currently stuck on a chapter which is dull but necessary, and I hate those. But WED will be finished, even if I have to type it using one paralysed finger at a time from my nursing home bed...
@merseytart