My first book review on this blog. I wish it could’ve been a book that I
liked better, but Amazon recommended it, I got it, here we are. Like any
erotica, once you start reading Fifty Shades of Grey you become a bit
hooked, if for nothing else than the short-lived naughty thrill of peeping into
someone’s else’s sex life. And that’s really all this book has. If it’s
interesting fresh personalities you’re after, or perhaps prose with creative
distinctiveness, don’t listen to Amazon and the New York Times.
To be fair, as I said, the lure of naughtiness might keep you reading. Obviously, titillating is an easy sale. But make no mistake, it’s nothing new and the writing leaves a lot to be desired. Certain phrases, word for word, appear in so many different chapters that I often thought I’d accidentally cycled my e-reader back to a previous page (which happens frequently with the iBooks app).
I sound like a complainy-puss, but I don’t like wasting my time with things I had high hopes for. I’m also rather cynical when it comes to erotica; it’s difficult to find unique stuff in a cliché-dependent genre. But it wasn’t the genre that closed the book for me; there are a number of things I take issue with. For one, Author E.L. James’ teensy, seemingly innocuous injections of toxic propaganda. Namely, a conversation where a supporting character, Mia, suggests that the city of Paris is great, except for Parisians (“Boo, French people!”), and an awkward scene where the mother of Christian Grey, Grace, a pediatrician, is called to the phone—a setup clumsily built around her opinion that all children should be vaccinated (“Boo, freedom of choice!”). There are more examples. I’m not writing a thesis on it, though. Suffice it to say it’s almost like Fox News drones on at low volume in the background. And it’s kind of a really big turn-off for an erotic novel. . . unless of course, you’re into that.
The plot follows young, innocent-minded Anastasia Steele, a college student whom falls in love with a psychotic domineering billionaire with cult-like BDSM tendencies—Christian Grey. Her conflict arises from an obsessive sexual attraction for him, despite the fact that he is incapable of love. His idea of a relationship consists of beating, humiliating, and essentially owning Anastasia; he’s done so with every other woman he’s ever known. It begins intriguingly enough. You want to see her rise against this vitiating dude, and for a while she does. Yet plot problems arise as she weakens and succumbs to him, luring herself into a “compromise” with a sexual deviant, which seems inconsistent as far as psychology and human instinct:
There doesn’t seem to be anything in Anastasia’s past to suggest she was destined to be a “submissive” lover—a sex-slave, to be blunt. Moreover, certain details suggest she’d be smarter than that, such as the essentially wholesome, harmless, educated and privileged lifestyle she’s had up until meeting Christian Grey. There are worse things than having a mother who remarries when the seasons change; I thought this facet of Anastasia’s past would’ve made her more adaptive to change and thus more mature, but for all that, she remains “innocent” and “naïve” in the face of insane decisions like whether or not her psychotic lover is an abuser for wholly dominating and humiliating her, desiring to bruise her and punish her like a child. But he’s “hot”, so hot apparently, that she cannot walk away and spends a great deal of time flailing and crying over her indecision.
In the long run, she accepts his bizarre idea of a relationship—going so far as to sign a non-disclosure agreement so that she’ll not try to sue him if he should happen go past her “limits”—and allows herself to believe that his tragic past has screwed him up, but she can change him. Is that not the proverbial mantra of a doomed relationship—“I can fix him/her.” Yes, it’s a black day for true love; womanhood too, for goddess’s sake. Continual references to the protag’s inner goddess is salt in the wound.
There’s no corroborating scene from her past to explain why she retains a grade-school mentality, yet it persists. Numerous references to this twenty-something’s innocence and her childlike mannerisms began to irk me. I stuck around until the middle of Book 2 for some kind of affirmation for why—why is she like this. And when I got sick of waiting, ill from the repetitive not-quite-healthy sex and dialogue, I gave up.
A far better read in this vein is Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel series, where the writing lives up to the immense challenge of commercializing BDSM. Carey exceeds expectation through genuinely flawed and lovable characters, vivid Renaissance imagery (requiring research), and of course, the sensual backdrop of fallen angels interbred with mortals. Her erotica feels far less gratuitous, repetitive, and clichéd; at the same time, it offers the same naughty little peeks that attract genre fans. Her characters develop with less emphasis on pathos via repetitive mannerisms (i.e., angrily raking fingers through hair and nervously biting the lip—over and over and over); more emphasis instead on an impressive command of emotional vocabulary and metaphor to evoke poetic heroes, villains, sex goddesses, cities and conflicts. While James’ erotica shows familiar sexual tension and adolescent-style confusion, Carey’s shows the potency of sensual language, and she effectively conveys the purpose of her protagonist’s suffering; forget the BDSM, forget it. The woman carves literary sculptures from silk and pain, treachery and true love. If you’ve already read her, you have likely raised your brow at Fifty Shades. If you like this book series, then, much like Twilight fans, you cannot be helped.
Now I know that Fifty Shades is on the New York Times Bestseller list. I don’t claim to understand the NYT, aside from “who does one have to fuck to make the list?” This novel seems inauthentic, hesitant, and pensive in the genre. . . but it has sexy results. Perhaps readers buy controversy; it worked for Dan Brown. Who am I to say. These are opinions. I don’t know how long the author worked, but it is necessary for me to point out that I’ve read better, where it baffled me on just how long the author must have worked, how much blood and sweat went into an obviously spectacular project that deserves whatever accolades. There are authors that I envy, that I long to be compared to. Others, I have to shake my head and wonder if they didn’t know somebody in the business. As a disclaimer, I am cheerfully cynical, as stated above, when it comes to these things. To me, re-doing an idea again and again after it was initially executed well seems like an arrogant waste of time. However, the New York Times and Amazon’s Top 100 are proof of otherwise—that good old fashioned kinky titillation wins out over creativity and substance in a pitifully massive way.
Another excellent read, far and away from this vein, is Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth.
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