Goldfinger

By Ian Fleming

After about a week or so of reading, I've finally finished the 1959 novel Goldfinger by Ian Fleming. As the seventh novel in the James Bond series, originally entitled The Richest Man in the World, Fleming outdid himself with characterizing Bond with sprinkles of references and childhood memories as a way of developing a complex character.

Bond becomes, quite beautifully, in this piece more of a connected friend to the reader than a lone enigma. While at first glance, this might appear as Fleming's softer side filtering into his writing from his devoted marriage to Anne Charteris (until his death in 1964), it shows something more when the first chapter is taken into consideration: the balance of life and death.

It begins with Bond's reflection on the matter through memories. Fleming writes, "What an extraordinary difference there was between a body full of person and a body that was empty! Now there is someone, now there is no more," (Fleming, 4) as part of the thread of events of a previous case. This section highlights the contrast between the two, setting up the rest of the novel as a wonderful reflection in of itself, specifically focusing on the death of the innocent and the death of the guilty as well as why it is harder to accept the former rather than the latter.

From the United States to England to France to Switzerland and to the United States again, Fleming takes the reader on an intriguing ride intermixed with the musings. But where Fleming falls short in the matter is the plot itself; he paces the novel with ease at first and then takes to speeding up the action, eventually to the point where the climax is blurred with the conclusion. The speed, which was jostling, was completed to further the contrast, to allow the reader to overlook their own feelings on death and distort the literary experience for them to reflect later.

At the same time, it is my finding that Fleming could have accomplished the same effect through other means that did not lose the reader at vital moments. There were several instances where I had to go back and reread what I was looking at because, to me, it wasn’t adding up the way Fleming wanted it to. I would have preferred that he took a little more time to let the reader catch up.

Regardless, this novel shows not only the class of Fleming's reflective power but the extent of his immense creativity. Either alone is enough, I believe, for anyone to need to read it; I look forward to seeing how Fleming's craft evolves in his next work in the series.