The infamous Fifty Shades of Grey is the newest piece of popular fiction that I have on my hit list. Generally I am put off things that are adored by the masses and usually this is with a good reason..
Fifty Shades is painfully written. I am a little bit of a snob when it comes to fiction and have come to the conclusion that bad authors use, with unfortunate regularity, the first person style as they just can't hack any other way of writing. First person can be used very well but it can also be a cop-out of epic proportions. First person does not need subtlety. Nor does Fifty Shades. With first person the author can literally tell you what the character is thinking in the most boring way possible. The girl actually says: "Did I just say that?" and "Jeez, he looks so freaking hot ". The lack of nuance means there's nothing to keep me interested. Another cringing part of Fifty Shades is the way the author namedrops long words. Maybe to seem more intellectual but it seems like they've swallowed a thesaurus. I just feel they could have used normal words and given it a more natural feel as it's meant to be Ana's POV. Plus there's too many adjectives. Good authors describe people so you can visualise them without you even realising they've taken time to do so. With this, every new person introduced was given a couple of lines of description. Every technique was so annoyingly obvious.
I admit I have not read the book in its entirety. I may have missed out, later on in the book, on a piece of wonderfully crafted prose or may be drawing conclusions without enough evidence. I doubt it though. The whole premise of the love at first sight, followed by the "discovering dark secrets and a heartbreaking past", was a bit boring. The BDSM angle is what made it take flight. I read the extract where Christian "rips through" Ana's virginity. All I can say is: how are people turned on by this? It has been labelled 'Mummy Porn'. There's no accounting for taste.
I do sort of see how the series could be so appealing to people. It's full of shameless erotic sex. The sort that, if you suspend your disbelief at some of the description, makes you lick your lips ever so slightly when reading. Even sex aside, every girl wants to feel they are Ana and a man like Christian is worshipping them. It's also (apparently) more gritty and realist than the stereotypical love stories out there. All I can reply to that is, people saying that must be woefully badly read. Unless all you read is Disney Princess books, we know love is not 'vanilla'-like. I could point out several books that I, at 18, have read with well written sex and characters who are not your average Prince Charming and Damsel in Distress.
Apparently the book has enhanced women's sex lives somehow. A theme of the piece was discovering and embracing your own secret desires so I can't object if they got a kick out of it and feel liberated to go do something kinky or whatever. I'm pretty liberated already to be honest and don't think reading about some wench getting tied up by her man is really going to improve my overall outlook on life. Anyways, porn is not that hard to find on the internet (or so I've heard) and if you're looking for porn with a heart (as it were) there are plenty of actual novels out there featuring characters with depth. People need to look for themselves rather than read what is popular at the time. People need to think for themselves.
The fact the piece developed when the author wrote a Twilight Fanfiction then decided the plot was good enough on its own, is enough to put any sane person off. I admit to laughing out loud when I realised that.
Fair play to the author, she's onto a winner here. I don't blame her - I blame the rest of humanity. They make me want to put my foot through my laptop screen when I read about them.
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