50 Shades of Grey - E.L James

No more for me. Thanks.

Maybe it is because I am not a mum, but I didn’t like 50 Shades of Grey. In fact, I don’t think I have ever been more irritated by a book in my entire life. I didn’t find Christian Grey sexy, nor did I find Anastasia Steele to be the empowered, independent, intelligent woman the other characters seem to say she is. What kind of independent woman decides to give it a go with a rich, handsome man despite the fact that she is terrified that he will seriously hurt her in the bedroom? A desperate ‘independent’ woman, that is who. The type of woman who annoys me enough on my Facebook news feed without having them rammed down my throat now as some sort if literary heroine.

I might have been able to excuse the characters had the story been unusually imaginative and properly structured, but I didn’t think that it was. One day, when I have run out of other things to procrastinate from cleaning my bathroom with, I am going to go through the book and count the number of times the word ‘deft’ is used to describe Christian Grey’s fingers and Anastasia Steele uses the phrase ‘holy shit’ in response to something that he does to her.

And it wasn’t just words and phrases that were repetitive. By the end of it I felt like I had read the same sex scene a dozen or so times. I believe it is this repetition that is causing people to skip over the sex scenes in favour of the rest of the story. In case you haven’t read it, I will give you a small, predictable taster. Christian says something kinky, Anastasia is turned on but apprehensive, eventually he persuades her (using his ‘deft’ fingers, usually), they have sex, Anastasia thinks ‘holy shit’, she has an orgasm (that is another thing that annoyed me, by the way. She apparently has an orgasm the first time she ever had sex. Huh?!). They are both happy. Then Anastasia suspects she might be weird and gets upset. She contemplates calling it off. Christian Grey turns up to change her mind and the whole thing starts again.

I cannot fault E.L James for her ability to tap into a marketplace. I wish I had thought of it first, actually. She has written a book about two hot, young people and made it story-worthy by making one of them very weird. I cant say why it appeals so much to the older generation as I am not one. I could ask my mum if she had read it, but she probably wouldn’t tell me the truth. As for people my age reading and loving it, I would be intrigued to know what it is particularly you like about it? Personally, I was not impressed by the story. I was impressed by the fact we had been mass marketed a tacky erotic novel as some sort of literary break through though! Hundreds of novels similar to these have been sitting on our shelves for years. What makes 50 Shades different is that it has been marketed as cool.

Can I also say, as a marketing officer myself - whoever was in charge of promoting this book deserves some sort of award. Whether you fell into reading it or you read it because everyone else was, I can’t take away from the fact that 50 Shades of Grey is the UK’s most purchased book (I say purchased and not read because reportedly quite a large percentage of people who buy the book don’t finish it). It has taken over my social networking feeds and everyone, whether they have read it or not, knows what it is.

There are another two books. I wont be reading them. My housemate heard from her colleague where the story goes, and it was pretty much everything I had already guessed. A film version will no doubt be in our cinemas before the book has even disappeared from our twitter feeds. It will involve a host of mega-stars, who will be offered a fortune because their names make the franchise yet more appealing. The last one will probably be split into two parts, just to drag it out a little bit more. And so, we will all continue to be bored with 50 Shades of Grey long into the next few years.