I enjoyed this 007 outing very much. Fleming keeps an even pace in this book. It is the slower, more laid-back Bond. No wild chases here. No feats of strength. There is, in fact, a very long, detailed round of golf that is well written. Not for the more modern reader is this "spy thriller".
Auric Goldfinger is an interesting villain in the movie. In the book, he is menacing, fascinating, and I enjoyed his character. Even Oddjob is more...odd, than his counterpart in the movie. The infamous Pussy Galore is less prominent in the book than the movie, and the only weak part of the book is the goofy gang of thugs that Goldfinger hires. They seem a bit too cartoonish for Fleming's usual style. But this does not detract from the overall effect of the book. "Goldfinger" the movie is not one of my favorite Bond films. So far, of the books, it is one of the best.

I shouldn't have read a James Bond book right after reading something by John le Carre. It rings that much more false. Of course, the two were written for two different audiences, but still. Next time I think I'll put more distance between the two.

I have been thoroughly enjoying the Ian Fleming, James Bond books. I make specific the caveats that I would with any book written in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Noting the time period is important. The culture was very different. Things that were unremarkable back then will cause discomfort and even anger to an audience situated in the present. I would give a trigger warning for misogyny and racism, as I have with every single one of these Bond novels. If either of these things are completely unacceptable to you even when read within the cultural milieu of the past, then you should not read these early Bond books.

Goldfinger is book seven with Auric Goldfinger as a memorable villain, Oddjob is a memorable henchman, and Pussy Galore is a memorable Bond “girl.” Project Grandslam is the epitome of a ballsy heist; Goldfinger attempting to steal the gold from Fort Knox. This book is without a doubt in my mind one of the better, more memorable books in the series.

it is like absolutely hilarious to me that once per james bond book he ends up calling a random woman a "silly bitch" or some variation on this theme and then starts falling desperately, miserably in love, lust, or both with her despite this. this time it was with two lesbians consecutively. i used to get a lot angrier when reading these books because every single one of them is a fucked-up tiramisu with 40 different layers of bias, but then i started to think about how interesting it is that men make fun of women for romance novels being stupid fantasies but write books like these, where they all get to imagine being a blue-eyed, hard-jawed, black-haired Romeo with a Walther in one pocket and a rubber in the other, and it makes me a little less mad because it pulls back the curtain on centuries of Freudian projection. men bizarrely insist that they don't personally have elaborate fantasies because they're either just thinking about a biological imperative to reproduce and thus nobly further the species or they're trying to figure out how to defend Women and Children, and it's like, actually, you have the same gene that makes a 13 year old girl draw I HEART EDWARD CULLEN on her notebook because you just want to be the world's specialest boy and have everyone be able to Tell just from Looking at you how Wonderful you are and really aren't you the Only One Who Can Save Us. all that having been said, this is also a naked work of empire-building and it's quite disgusting, maybe even more offensive than the others, but at the end of the day, it's also a fantasy. oppressors of all kinds want you to think that the way you see and experience and make sense of the world is mushy and subjective and clouded by feelings, and that everything they do is Objective with a capital O and thus somehow worthy, but the way that they order the world is a fiction!! it's often a fiction with firepower behind it, but there is nothing natural about it, and strangely, a book like this can help you see that more clearly. there's a sort of rank desperation to have a particular ontology recognized as authoritative here, and in striving to force it on you, it paradoxically weakens itself, because if it were really the natural way of things--for james bonds to be in charge and for women to be simpering sidekicks and for people of color to be servants and for the sun to never set on the empire--then you wouldn't really have to insist upon it. it would just be. and of course it's a steaming load of horseshit. anyway, don't make fun of me, but somehow i never realized that Pussy Galore was a lesbian--i just assumed her name was that because she had pussy and..like...galore of it to offer, not necessarily that she was gay, but actually ian fleming's reasoning there is a bit better than mine in this one and only regard

Verdict: I can’t. Honestly I just can’t.

When I last read Bond it was in Casino Royale where he spent equal amounts of time playing a card game and getting his nuts kicked in. As “Goldfinger” begins he’s back at the cards and his nuts have (sadly) recovered. Following a chance encounter with the titular villain Bond’s officially put on his trail. Bond and Goldfinger then play golf, have dinner and go on a drive through Europe. Bond’s nuts have another (un)fortunate escape and then he’s hired by Goldfinger as office administrator for the Crime of the Century. It goes as you would expect and Bond ends up with Pussy Galore (capitalisation optional).

Really, the story is beside the point. This is not my opinion, it is a literary analysis. The plot serves to move Bond from place to place and person to person where he can sneer or leer over everyone with an occasional break for golf and a poem about cars. Watches. Whiskey. You know, man stuff.

But I’m not going to beat this book down because the digressions bore me (honestly though; reading about golf). Ian Flemming cannot have known my personal proclivities at the time of writing and if he’s fascinated by written descriptions of two men playing 18 holes or dealing cards or shifting gears in a car he’s the author and it’s his right. It’s just a shame I could find nothing in this book to divert my attention away from the shrieking misogyny, racism and homophobia of our titular hero.

The misogyny begins on a foundational level. Women are rarely referred to by name, even when mentioned in a group with named men. They are NEVER referred to as women, only ‘girls’. That got very grating very quickly. There seems to be something of a pattern to it. Pussy Galore actually gets a fair few proper namings while a baddie (though maybe that has something to do with the name) until ::SPOILER:: she throws her lot in with Bond and then immediately she becomes “the girl”. Furthermore, both of Bond’s conquests in this book devolve into ‘childlike’ behaviour, which moves the charges from insulting to gross.

And Tilly. Poor Tilly. Tilly is not dressed for seduction, Bond tells us. She is merely wearing stockings, a mini skirt, corset belt and silk blouse. We are then treated to a description of the various methods of interaction between her breasts and said blouse (to whit; taut). Thanks Bond. He asks her to buy him lunch, which apparently initiates a complex “master/slave” negotiation of the eyes between them. If you’re following this logic please keep it to yourself as we probably won’t be friends. Possibly Tilly is a spy as she has the incredible “ability to walk unaided”. I wish I were paraphrasing.

Any way, it turns out Tilly is a big ol lesbian and is killed pretty much as a direct consequence of this. Bond’s words upon the occasion of her murder; “Silly bitch. Didn’t care much for men.” Aesop, eat your heart out. We seem to be segueing into the ‘homophobic’ element of this book so let’s just tackle that head on. Bond certainly does.

We are treated to an extensive inner monologue where he decides homosexual men and women aren’t actually attracted to the same sex, rather the emancipation of women has lead to a confusion of gender roles of which “homosexuality” is the direct result.

Pussy Galore is also a lesbian but only ‘cause she was raped as a child. True to Bond’s hypothesis, she was merely confusing a distaste for incestuous sexual violence with a distaste for men in general. We can only assume this condition was exacerbated by practising her right to vote. Luckily, observing the manly way in which Bond took notes at a meeting and rode a train before being rescued by co-workers cleared her confusion. Hump the gay away, hallelujah.

Which brings us to Koreans. They are mutant sub-humans held in distaste by even their employer. They eat cats and rape English women because they are Korean and that is what Korean do. This is completely self-evident to Bond. I’m pretty sure reading this book is a hate crime in Seoul.

Am I a humourless harpy? Am I making too much of Bond, a brand, a bit of fun, a product of its time? No. Shut up. I read Casino Royale a few years ago and came away with a fairly good opinion of it (Which is the highest opinion anyone not an ardent baccarat devotee can hold of the book). I remember it being more low-key than expected; Bond being more of a fallible everyman. I don’t recall dry-heaving whenever women (pardon me, “girls”) make appearances. There was once a better Bond. As the for the ‘of its time’ excuse, John LeCarre was writing parallel to Fleming and, while no one is going to mistake him for Germaine Greer anytime soon, he could at least conceive of a world wherein females come out the other side of puberty and humanity extends beyond Caucasians.

I’m sorry but if you enjoy or even excuse this book you are in too deep. This book is an ossification of the chauvinistic white supremacist capitalist patriarchy that has its tiny orange fingers in every pie of awfulness appearing in your news feed and if I sound like a Guardian reader it’s because I am. Possibly there was a time in my adolescence, when the world seemed to be getting safer and fairer and generally progressing in the direction Sesame Street had prepared me for, when this sort of thing could have stuck me as amusing. But it’s 2017 and I’m not laughing.

Reading a James Bond novel is always an exercise in the willing suspension of disbelief. But this one tested mine to the breaking point. You know the laser-in-groin scene from the movie. Here it's a circle saw, but what follows is just nuts. On a whim, Goldfinger decides to spare his would-be assassins' Bond and Tilly Masterton's lives: he sedates them, transports them unconscious from Switzerland to New York, and when they wake up he gives them an ultimatum: "WORK FOR ME AS CLERICAL STAFF / CONTRIVED VIEWPOINT CHARACTERS ON MY INSANELY COMPLICATED PROJECT TO NUKE FORT KNOX, OR DIE!!! OK? YES? GOOD, HERE'S SOME TYPING FOR YOU TO DO."

Sadly, probably the worst Bond book I've read thus far.

The overarching plot is good -- evil overlord joins forces with criminals all over the United States to rob Fort Knox in a daring plan that only Bond can foil. The trouble is the middle.

To establish that the evil overlord is, well, evil, there's a long section (two chapters? three? seventeen billion?) of Bond and the antagonist playing golf. In excruciating detail, we are forced to watch the two traverse all eighteen holes, in which Bond must win in order to establish himself as the kind of person the antagonist wants on his team -- and thus develop his cover identity. But, of course, the antagonist cheats, often quite obviously, and Bond must develop careful subterfuge to make it appear as if he wins anyway.

It's not nearly as exciting as I'm making it sound. Ideally, I'm making it sound terribly dull, and even then it's not as exciting as it sounds. The seventeen billion chapters of golf could have been reduced to a simple two-page summary of the game, at which point we could have moved on to something more deserving of our attention.

1.Plot – Plot? Okay, it’s James Bond. Who doesn’t know the plot? Megalomaniac wants to rule the world. James Bond Kicks his ass, then gets laid at least twice.

Oh, all right, he played golf too.

I guess I just mean to say, this is an old book, that became an old movie. There were no surprises in the plot. Sean Connery’s Bond fits very well with Ian Fleming’s book.

Bond, on his way back to England after tracking down drug dealers in Mexico gets delayed at the airport. While there, he accepts a proposition from an acquaintance on a past mission. Someone’s cheating him at a cards (Baccarat).

It turns out that the man cheating at cards is the richest English Citizen on the planet. Bond foils the cheater and blackmails him into paying his acquaintance back and meets a hot chick. He enjoys a long weekend with the Goldfinger’s then, while on duty, he spends the time researching Goldfinger.

I could go on, but the plot is rather well known, if you have ever seen a James Bond movie, you’ve probably seen Goldfinger.
I Didn’t see many differences between the movie version and the book as far as the basic plot is concern. There were some differences I noticed in what we were able to see or learn about what was going on.

First, James Bond seems to be having some issues with traumatic Stress. This is one of the amazing things in the book considering the era that it had been written. It’s not much of a nod, just a little trouble sleeping, some alcohol abuse (Self-medication) and some guilt and remorse. This did more to change my appreciation for Ian Fleming than it did James Bond. As far as Bond goes, it also explains some of his cold nature, as they say, “Indifference is a point beyond rage.” I may be a bit crazy, but I think it’s kind of cool that, through what ever exposure to men in danger or who have had to kill people (likely the second world war), Fleming or some part of him noticed how traumatic brutality effected a human being, and that little ibt of it leaked out into his book during a time when most people tended to deny combat and trauma related mental health problems unless you were a victim.

Second, we got a chance to see how much James Bond really sweat things. The golf game is a particularly good example. AN example that got tedious after a few holes. The play by play for Goldfinger Vs Bond went on too long for me, but the benefit is that we got to see how much stress went on inside his head, that never shows in the movies at least not to the degree we got to see it in the book. Again we get to see bond stress when he realizes Goldfiner and Oddjob are going to cut him in to pieces.

Third we get to see Bond’s strength of will and determination when he’s able to hold his breath until he black out. Ordinarily, I’d write that off as fictional hogwash, but I believe that’s likely developed from a firsthand account from the second world war.

Fourth, I have again been reminded of an era where there were hints of a gender revolution building that hadn’t yet been realized. Where Fleming recognized women in his books, even the most potent of them, P. Galore was still shunted off to play nurse and be a boy toy (never mind that she was a lesbian). But this was a different time. This was a place where people thought Ginger was the sexy one and Mary Anne was a cute side kick.

Fifth, of the James Bond’s I’ve seen, Sean Connery played the role the closest to what it was supposed to be.

To Sum up thoughts about the plot. I’d say I was disappointed at how little James Bond had to do with foiling Goldfinger. All he seemed to do was get captured and sit on his hands until he managed to drop a note in the lieu. Even then Felix Lighter did more than Bond did.

2.Characters. How do you feel about James Bond?

I actually like the Sean Connery Bond more after reading the book. I appreciate Ian Fleming more, but I found that, other than Bond this read more like a graphic novel or a Comic Book. The characters were more, caricatures, other than Bond, though how much this is due to the era it was written than the author I can’t say. As for the individual characters?

James Bond actually came across as more human, rather than less Human. The ability to see inside his head and register his fears and remorse allowed the character to feel deeper and more complete than any move ever could. Other than that, he was much the same as the Connery Bond.

Goldfinger turned out to more devious and diabolical, but no real differences between what we saw on the screen and what we saw in the book.

Oddjob – finally I got to see what was so frightening about oddjob that made him dangerous above and beyond the other creepy lethal villains that bond faced in other stories. This is one character that the movie did not stand up to. Odd Job in the movie was scary, but physically, not like the book version, save he was Asian.

P. Galore – Does the woman’s name clue you in on what her value to the story turned out to be? This is the strongest female, good to semi-good, to semi bad, character in the Bond gallery until Jynx comes along and, other than having a likeable wit, if not particularly beautiful personality, is to run a ring of prostitutes, show her independence by being gay and then give that up to go to bed with Bond in order to save her skin at the end of the book. Okay, sign of the times I know, but even the girl who played Goldfinger’s boy toy in the beginning of the book had more redeemable human traits and she was helping Goldfinger filch thousands of dollars by cheating at cards.

3.Action: How good were the action elements out of 10? Best action scenes?
The best action scenes came at the end of the book. I’d rate them at about a 3, maybe a 4. I realize this is how books were written in the late 50’s and 60’s but I’ve read other books from the same era that had more action. I found the action clipped and rather than taking us through the action like Matthew Rielly, James Rollins and Clive Cussler, it was narrated like a flash back. I’d reclassify this book as a suspense thriller by todays standards. I understand that this is what we called “action” stories at one time. I’d offer, for comparison, Alistair MacLean’s books, written about the same time. MacLean’s writing is exciting. This was more like Yadda-yadda-ing sex.

4.How does this compare to the movie versions?
The book was better than the movie, but only marginally so and in aspects of “action” the movie was better.

5.Did the spy aspects feel authentic to you?
It’s likely the spy aspects were “too authentic” and that is why it was more boring than the movies.

6.Overall verdict: out of 10 or 5 stars?
Out of 5 stars, I’ll give it a 3. I might skip to a Bond story from a later time and see if Ian Fleming’s writing style changed with the times. I hate to say it, because my memory of the movies is still generally good, but this was a bit of a letdown for me.

7.Other books like this you'd recommend?

I’d recommend “Where Eagles Dare” and “Circus” by Alistair MacLean before I’d recommend Goldfinger, or even “The Enemy” by Desmond Bagely, which I think is very good.

It’s only fair that I recognize the difference in the world when Goldfinger was written and how the world is now and the differences in writing styles. This is, of course, only my opinion, but, for now, I’d rather watch the movies than read the books, and for me, that’s a shocking thing. I tend to believe that the books are always better than the movies.

Even though I've been noting how Fleming's writing has been getting stronger with each book through this tour of mine through his Bond books, I went into this one with lowered expectations, because (a) I know that the film actually improves on the plot by solving some problems that Fleming didn't, and (b) the movie may be considered a classic, but I actively dislike it. Yes, GOLDFINGER is among my least favorite Bond movies.

Anyway, after a strong beginning (why Bond involves himself in Goldfinger's cheating at cards actually makes more sense here than in the movie), the book becomes a slog. The best scene in the movie (the golf match) just grinds on and on here; and as in the film, Bond himself just seems largely impotent through the latter half of the story. Add to that Fleming's decision to openly depict Bond as a racist who REALLY hates Koreans and Fleming's famous homophobia (there's NO way he writes the women of this book the way he does if he wasn't REALLY creeped out by lesbians for some reason), and honestly, GOLDFINGER as a novel isn't a whole lot of fun. In fact, writing this all out, I'm wondering if three stars might be too generous.

JAMES BOND WILL RETURN
IN
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY (I'm looking forward to that because it's a short story collection, a break from format. Also, with GOLDFINGER I exit my portion of this series that are re-reads. Everything now will be a first-time read.)

One of the better James Bond novels. . . . Fleming wrote fairly well; his characterizations sometimes wandered a bit (in one novel, Bond went from distrusting someone to trusting the eventual villain, to distrusting him for not much apparent reason for any of the changes). Here, we come up against some fine adversaries--Goldfinger and Oddjob. The premise is rather breathtaking.

Not a great novel, but an amusing and entertaining read.

#95 of 2020

Not one of my favourite 007 books, but still entertaining.

I didn't like the first half though... too much golf...

Amazing story. Heaps of awesome scenes 5 stars for this.

Loses 2 stars because it's very sexist and racist! Fucked up view of anyone who isn't a straight, white alpha male.