Book Review: Fifty Shades of Grey
It's probably not news to anyone but this book has been selling like crazy. At my bookstore employees have the ability to rent hardcover and trade paperback books, so I gave in to curiosity and borrowed Fifty Shades of Grey so I could see what all the fuss is about.
I want those hours of my life back, plz. You know a book is bad when you spend the first two chapter mentally MSTing every second line (I may post the MSTing by itself later). Apparently the book was originally Twilight fanfiction with the names and details altered so the authors could publish it. It doesn't take much looking to find its imprint in the book despite the lack of sparkly vampires and werewolves.
The characters are flat and boring and the narrator, Anastasia Steele (aka Bella Swan) has all the personality of doormat and her every thought revolves around Christian Grey and how handsome, sexy, etc he is, with repeated (to the point of nausea) reference to his ‘piercing grey eyes’. Subtle. Edward Cullen - oops, I'm sorry, Christian Grey on the other hand comes across as an obsessive, manipulative asshole in a way that has nothing to do with being the dominant party in a BDSM relationship.
Of course given that Ana is a virgin at the beginning of the relationship some innocence is to be expected, but she's twenty-one years old and seems to lack understand of even the basic aspects of attraction and lust. Frankly her initial sexuality comes across to me as being very childlike - which has disturbing implications all on its own. And the whole 'inner goddess thing' - okay it was mildly amusing the first couple times, but with the way she used in twenty times a chapter it got old really fast.
The sex itself is hot enough I suppose, even if BDSM isn't my thing, but it really doesn't make up for the massive amount of stupid in this book. In addition, I'm hardly an expert on the subject, but from reading reviews and doing a bit of online research the way the BDSM aspect was portrayed in the book is quite misleading and sometimes downright wrong.
There’s a strong undercurrent of misogyny that’s not so very well disguised as Ana being the submissive to Grey’s dominant in their sexual relationship. This might be partly due to the source material (Twilight) which wasn’t exactly big on gender equality either, but either way it doesn’t endear me to this book any more.
The worst scene for me was when Ana sends Christian and email with a 'joke' that makes it sounds like she's ending the relationship. In response he drives over to her house and confronts her in her bedroom and then ties Ana to her bed and proceeds to forcibly have sex with her. Ana in this scene is clearly very intimidated and even fearful and, while she does derive pleasure from the sex, afterwards she's left feeling humiliated and dirty. I forgot to add that this takes place before they agreed to any sort of dom/sub relationship. Apparently this is supposed to be sexy. Apparently this isn’t considered rape in the author’s world. I call utter bullshit. I almost threw the book away in disgust at that point.
Beyond the sex and Ana gushing over Christian the story is really quite dull, there’s not even the vague attempt at a secondary, non-relationship plot that even romance novels usually have a go at. Instead we’re treated to the main character going through the motions of everyday life in unnecessary detail, particularly since little of it hinges on the so-called plot. It’s every bit as boring as it sounds.
And then there's the writing style, oh god, the writing style. It was bad from the very first sentence which uses the clumsy old cliché line of "I looked into the mirror and I saw this:'. The author should also be brought to court for gross abuse of a thesaurus. In an attempt to sound sophisticated (?) she ends up sounding purple which makes the bland characters and bad-written story stand out even more in comparison. The badly structured sentences and the punctuation abuse would have this book dripping with red ink if a proper editor, or heck even a high-school English teacher had a go at it. This is why you should always have an editor for your book, kids.
It was painful struggle to get through this book and at the end I have to conclude that I’ve found something that actually worse than the Twilight series. For those you who haven’t read it yet and are curious - don’t waste your money! There are so many better books out there (yes, even better erotica) and life’s too short to read crap like this.