Fifty Shades of Grey
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Fifty Shades of Grey


BOOK REVIEW: EL James is a TV executive based in West London who has always wanted to write. She needs to try harder.

Lorraine Craighead
Mon, 28 May 2012

BOOK REVIEW: Fifty shades of Grey by E L James (Kindle edition $9.99)

E L James is a TV executive based in West London who has always wanted to write. She needs to try harder.

If her literary skills as demonstrated in this book are typical of the average television executive it explains many things about the quality of much of the trash on the box.

She has made a great deal of money for herself from what started as a fan fiction blog on a website featuring characters from Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series.

She changed the names to Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele and published it as an e-book in May 2011 with the Australian virtual publisher The Writers Coffee Club.

The demographic of the typical customer is female, married, and between 30 and 40.

The book was boosted by word of mouth commendation and soon it was available free on the Kindle website. Unfortunately as its fame has spread it now costs $US9.99 on a Kindle near you.

The sex toy industry has been delighted by the popularity of the book. It has caused an explosion in sales of its wares.

At one sex toy company the sale of Kegal exercise balls known as Ben-Wa balls has gone up by 300%.

Not only that, but the book has inspired Fifty Shades of Grey workshops where over cocktails participants can be inspired to turn fantasies into reality. At one such event in New York the first 25 guests receive gift bags filled with toys that were Mr Grey approved.

This is soft porn, but the language clunks. Literature this isn’t but, on the other hand, does pornography have to be great writing?

She has an irritating turn of phrase with expressions such as Holy sh*t, Holy Moses and he is freaking hot. Anastasia compares her physical reactions at emotional moments to the spin cycle on a washing machine.

This is before her inner women does the dance of the seven veils.

The story line is as old as time itself. A young gauche innocent girl, unsure of her attractiveness, falls in love with an older powerful and wealthy man, who shows her the sexual ropes with a little mild bondage and discipline.

There is a lot of significant meeting of eyes when bungee cord and duct tape are being purchased. However, when push comes to shove the action is pretty tame.

The language is curiously prim. Backsides are mentioned frequently, buttocks never; there are lots of erections but no penis, John Thomas, manhood, love muscle or purple helmeted warrior of love, for that matter.

This is a book written by a woman for women, so please note gentlemen; size is never mentioned, except in the wallet department.

Thousands of women have read this book with enthusiasm, so pay attention and you may find the answer to that perennial question of what women want. What women really want is a man with money, power, a penchant for inventive sex and a dark secret in his past.

Mr Grey descends from a long line of damaged heroes with lots of money who have set feminine hearts aflutter since the 1800s.

Remember Heathcliff (who wasn't very fanciable until he went off and made a fortune), Mr Rochester, from Jane Eyre , Max de Winter at Mandalay and, of course, the incomparable Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind.

In these books sex was alluded to, but not explicated. In these less imaginative times there is a need out there for well written literature that includes lots of great sex.

Do not despair help is at hand – as reported in the London Telegraph, Alain du Botton (philosopher, founder of the School of Life, and the thinking woman’s hunk) is to meet with leaders in porn and the arts to bring about a better kind of pornography.

He intends to set up a website called “Better Porn,” which will show examples which “would excite our lusts in contexts which also presented other, elevated sides of human nature – in which people were being witty for instance, or showing kindness, or working hard, or being clever."

Witty porn? Good luck with that.

Lorraine Craighead
Mon, 28 May 2012
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