You Only Live Twice (novel) concerned with the actual business of a thriller", and his enjoyment was further diminished by what he considered "the grossness of Bond's manners and his schoolboy obscenities". Peter Duval Smith, in the "Financial Times", was in two minds about the book, believing on the one hand that "the background is excellent ... Mr. Fleming has caught the exact 'feel' of Japan", and on the other that "You Only Live Twice" "is not really a success and it's Bond's fault mainly. He just doesn't add up to a human being". Maggie Ross, in "The Listener" was also a little dissatisfied, writing
You Only Live Twice (novel) way through the middle-brow masses, a relaxation to the great, a stimulus to the humble, the only common denominator between Kennedy and Oswald". The critic for "The Times" was largely unimpressed with "You Only Live Twice", complaining that "as a moderate to middling travelogue what follows will just about do ... the plot with its concomitant sadism does not really get going until more than half way through". In contrast to the previous novels, "The Times" continued, "though Mr. Fleming's macabre imagination is as interesting as ever, some of the old snap seems to have gone". Dealing with the cliffhanger