Fifty Shades of Grey: Book One of the Fifty Shades Trilogy

AUTHOR: E.L. James

PUBLISHED: 2012

GENRE: Smut.  Smutty smut smut.

Warning: The contents of this book are not appropriate for the young or the faint of heart.  Not that I’ll get into the details here, but still. 

I’ll admit it to you outright: I read this book because it gave me an opportunity to talk about fanfiction.

Ms. James is, from all accounts, an avid fanfiction writer, mainly of Twilight.  (More on that later.)  For those of you that aren’t familiar with it, fanfiction is when people take existing characters – from TV, movies, cartoons, anywhere – and write their own stories, usually to amend a disliked storyline or unite two characters that never got together.  Fanfiction is prolific across the web; in fact, your fair blogger has herself been known to partake on occasion*.  But there is a stigma involved with fanfiction, and those who write it often do it in secret, ashamed of their habits.  This is true for a variety of reasons: you’re using other people’s characters and constructs; it involves a sometimes unhealthy obsession with the subject matter. 

The main reason, however, is that a great deal of fanfiction is smut.  Dirty, dirty smut.**  Well-known characters having sex everywhere and all the time, until you have to wonder, don’t these people have to go to work eventually?  It’s a very strange phenomenon, made all the more strange by the fact that it is often the characters you least expect that get into the wackiest situations.  Which brings us back around, very circuitously, to Ms. James and Twilight.

Twilight, I am told, has a ridiculous fanfiction following.  And, given that the Twilight walks this crazy line of intense sexual tension and absolute abstinence, most of that is smut.  I met a girl who had a whole alter ego thing where she was a happy housewife by day and famous Twilight smut writer by night, complete with groupies.  Our Ms. James started out in a remarkably similar way, and Fifty Shades of Grey is basically a dirtier, less supernatural Twilight.  Young, inexperienced girl falls under the thrall of a mysterious, controlling man.  She knows he’s bad for her, but she can’t turn away!  The main difference is, while Bella and Edward play supernatural baseball, Ana and Christian spend time in his S&M playroom. 

What?  I warned you.

The thing is, Fifty Shades of Grey is huge.  Barely-out-and-on-top-of-the-best-seller's-list huge.  Appropriately enough, Twilight huge.  All those women who stole their daughter's copies of Twilight are now reading Fifty Shades and loving it, precisely because it provides that one - ahem - element that the young adult version lacks.

Ana, a college student, is stumbling along in life when she meets Christian Grey, millionaire entrepreneur and all-around hottie.  The attraction is instantaneous, and soon the two cannot stay away from each other.  But Christian has a secret: he’s a dominatrix***, and only has relationships with women who agree to be his submissive partner.  The rest of the book is Ana going back and forth, trying to decide what if she should agree to this life.  It’s sounds frisky, right?  Sexy!  Except not. 

Setting aside the poor writing - "Ana finally succumb to wakefulness" and that ilk - the book has a whole host of problems. 

Problem no. 1: James makes the strangest choices when it comes to characterization.  Ana is, shall we say, unexperienced when all this starts, and a few chapters later, she's having non-stop sex in a love dungeon.  Christian is the huge businessman who has built a huge empire but he's only 27.  Elliot, Christian's brother - who conveniently starts dating Ana's roommate Kate - is totally normal.  None of it quite makes sense.

Problem no. 2: James doesn’t know whether she wants this thing to be sexy or funny.  Intense sexual descriptions are interrupted by the running gag of Ana’s “inner goddess” and conscience fighting with each other.  This is no time for cutesy, lady.

Problem no. 3: James focuses on the weirdest details.  She is obsessed with Ana having a hair tie at all times.  She frequently stops to make a point of referencing her hair ties.  Does she have a hair tie?  Did she put it in?  Gasp!  She did! Who cares?  On the other side, Christian is fanatically about Ana eating.  He is forever telling her to eat.  Commanding her to eat.  Practically shoving the food in her mouth himself.

Problems no. 4: James has Christian present Ana with a contract outlining all the rules of this whole S&M endeavor.  The problem is, she puts the entire thing in the book – literally pages of legalese referencing not only who can do what and when, but when she has to work out, how much she has to eat (see no. 2 above), and what she has to wear.  Then, a couple chapters later, she includes an amended contract.  We didn’t care the first time.  We’re certainly not going to check the right changes were made.

Problem no. 5: This story evidently takes place in the present, as there are no indicators otherwise.  But Ana doesn’t have a cell phone, or her own computer, or an email address.  What college student doesn’t have all of those things already?  Having Ana be visibly surprise and excited when Christian sets an email address up for her is ridiculously distracting.

So it really is a dirty version of Twilight - right down to how infuriated I get when I think about how such crap could be so huge.  I guess I should have known better from the start.

LENGTH: 528 pages (at least 15 of which is the contract)

MAINSTREAM OR NOT: It's totally the new Twilight.

SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: Ugh.  If you like Twilight, you'll LOVE this.  (Adults, that is.  If you're a teenager, STAY AWAY.)  If not, you'll just end up with a bad case of angry deja vu.  Personally, I think you should just go find some good fanfiction.  You know you want to.

*It was nine seasons before they got Mulder and Scully together.  What were we supposed to do until then?

**Which your fair blogger does not write.  I would just spend the whole time giggling like a 10-year-old boy.

***What’s the male form of dominatrix?  These are things I never thought I’d have to worry about.