It's unbelievable how often I hear about this book these days. "Fifty shades of Grey". It has become a sort of a reference point, you need to mention it to appear fashion-forward and well-read. I read this "novel" last summer, by accident. ("Yeah, right" you must be thinking).
Arriving to the Zurich airport to leave for vacations I realized I had nothing to read on the plane. So I stepped into the airport bookshop to get something funny and light for the flight. The choice was no brainer - "Fifty shades of Grey" has been all over the place, so I picked it up, read a summary and a few lines from a random page. Already sitting in the plane I looked at a small print on the back of the book: "erotic novel"... I cringed.
The plot: Anastasia Steele, a virgin student, meets a young magnate of unusual sexual practices. He is into dominance/submission, she is not, the figures. A nice script for a uncomplicated adult movie. I admit I could have lived with the plot if the text was at least a tiny bit more complex. The most frequent phrase of the book is "Oh, my...". C'mon you guys!
One of the rare people who didn't like the book was Zoe Williams from the Guardian (Dear Zoe Williams, if we were not worlds apart we might have possibly become friends!): "It's the fastest-selling novel for adults of all time – and it's very adult in content. Why have millions of women been seduced by Fifty Shades of Grey?" (I am asking myself the same question.) "James's sex scenes are not incidental, they are the meat of the plot, the crux of the conflict, the key to at least one of and possibly both the central characters. It is a sex book. It is not a book with sex in it."
In short, I had a hard time finishing the novel and I have not a slightest interest of knowing what happens to their butt plugs in the next two parts, but if something extraordinary happens, please let me know!
Nice weekend and sweet consensual sex, everyone!
Love
AB
What a great book for frustrated middle-aged, unimaginative women. (Pretty creepy too.)
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing how much money this woman has made writing this drivel. It should be titled "Fifty Shades of Banality," or better yet, "Fifty Hours of Wasting Your Life."
How I wish we could return to the days of a more subtle description of human interaction.
We've devolved pretty far from the definition of love. (People seem to have a never-ending problem confusing love and sex.)
I'll stick with Emily Brontë and "Wuthering Heights," or Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice." That's love...spoken from the heart, in sublime, eloquent, and beautiful verse, with haunted moors in cold driving rain, and, hard as it is to believe, narratives with PLOTS!
These ideals of romance are lost in the 21st century, fragments and footnotes of a time lost. And somehow, both novels were written without once referring to "butt plugs."