I'm not sure I even need to introduce these books as they seem to be ALL EVERYONE'S TALKING ABOUT.
But for those of you who may not yet be aware, the Fifty Shades trilogy is the erotic breakout series of the digital download revolution, written by Erika Leonard James. It's revolutionary, as it has proved that anyone can take up writing on the internet from the comfort of their own home, build their popularity, then get their work properly published, as a novel, and downloaded on to Kindles and Kobos. It originally evolved through online slash/fic - fan-published erotic writing; you know, in that creepy place on the internet where things happen such as Ron Weasley and Harry Potter discovering their real feelings for one another etc. James is a massive fan of the Twilight series written by Stephenie Meyer, which inspired this series.
The debut novel, Fifty Shades of Grey (the focus of this post), tells the story of virgin university student Anastasia Steele, who falls for psychologically-damaged, untouchable billionaire Christian Grey, who is really into BDSM (bondage, dominance, masochism and sadomasichism) and makes her sign some kind of sex-slave contract. As far as I'm aware, she breaks down his walls of emotional incompetence and they end up falling in love. I have a confession to make: I thought that what I did read of the book was so awful that I couldn't bear to read any more, and so, have not actually finished the book...
Initially I resisted reading it, partly because I can be a bit impertinant about things that everyone else likes, and partly because I heard about Christian Grey's reputation for mental health issues due to an abusive childhood materialising through extreme sexual deviance. I have recently made a decision to stop reading or watching things that upset me. I went through a stage of reading hard core biographies about people who had had really tough childhoods. Yeah, I don't think it was very healthy. But when I noticed a friend with a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey, I thought I'd have a little look.
Anyway, turns out I was certainly in the minority for resisting. I will let the statistics speak for themselves:
- The book sold 205,130 copies last week, some 64,000 copies more than the previous record set by Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol in July 2010.
- James has become the first author to have two or more books sell in excess of 100,000 copies in the same week.
- The trilogy has so far sold some 2.75m digital and print copies in the UK.
- Figures show that Fifty Shades of Grey, already cited as the fastest-selling book of the year, has now sold 765,000 copies in two months. As a comparison, Brown's The Da Vinci Code, previously the biggest-selling paperback of all time, took six months to achieve the same sales figure.
- Last week, sequels Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed sold 132,174 copies and 115,086 copies respectively. In total, £1.93 million was spent on 452,390 copies of the trilogy - more than was spent on the next 50 bestselling paperback novels of the week combined.
- It is expected the first book in the series will have sold one million copies by the end of the month.
Now, I wouldn't normally do book reviews, as I find them terribly dull. Also, I appreciate that having not actually read the entire book, my opinions probably aren't that valid. But I was genuinely taken aback by how this book has become so popular, that I just couldn't not do this post. Sorry everyone.
Here's my thoughts, broken down into categories (structure makes me write more logically when I'm outraged):
The Author:
On writing the book: "I came up with a story and I wrote it," James told Entertainment Weekly. "I read an interview with Stephenie [Meyer] where she said, ‘You’ve got to start at the beginning.’ So I did that."
GOOD.
Anyway, James is a middle-aged woman, and I think this fact is pretty evident in her writing. Anastasia Steele- the 21-year-old American college student, living in 2011, doesn't have any previous experiece of using the internet or recieving an email. Also, in the two chapters that are given to explaining the legal document of how Miss Steele can't talk to anyone about her and billionaire Grey's 'sordid' sexual relationship, a large part of that is dedicated to explaining that the kinkier sex stuff (e.g. fisting, caning, scat, water sports, threesomes etc) wouldn't actually be tolerated.
Sentence Structure:
This is the thing that I think annoyed me the most.
Having read part of a Twilight book during my research into this post, it has been made very clear to me that James's writing reads like a bad photocopy of Meyer's writing. Meyer is a terrible writer, but James is worse, tenfold (even ignoring the absurd over-use of the word 'murmur').
Even the opening line of the book- "I scowl with frustration at myself in the mirror"— has at least two too many words.
Which brings me to...
Use of abjectives:
James throws adjectives around until they finally don't mean anything at all.
Characters are clumsily described every time they enter or re-enter the story: "Holy crap. What the hell is he doing here, looking all outdoorsy with his tousled hair and in his cream chunky-knit sweater, jeans, and walking boots?"
The narrator's interior life is vapid and painfully literal: "My inner goddess is spinning like a world-class ballerina, pirouette after pirouette," and "Oh, the many faces of Christian Grey. Will I ever be able to understand this mercurial man?"
Erotic content:
THERE'S NOT EVEN THAT MUCH SEX IN IT. There are pages upon pages on obsessing over the relationship and getting drunk (classic chic lit), but there doesn't even seem to be much sex in there at all! Although it might seem highly racey to more conservative US audiences, readers of Black Lace, the naughtier Mills & Boon or Shirley Conran would find it puzzlingly tame (not that I read a lot of erotic fiction, but even I know of worse).
More of a problem, practically speaking, is that Anastasia has like nine orgasms every time Grey walks past her, which makes her journey to self-discovery vastly less interesting than it might have been.
Look, I can tell you all day long about how poorly written I think these books are, but the thing about critiquing erotica is, you can't tell someone what is and isn't sexy. It's subjective. These books must be selling because people find them to be sexy. The thing that concerns me is that surely erotic writing doesn't have to be terrible writing?
During my research I actually found an article written by an anonymous member of the BDSM community. I urge you to read it, but in a nutshell they explain that Fifty Shades of Grey is definitely not a real depiction of real BDSM.
The author of the article voices their concern that the novel completely ignores elements of safe play that apparently those familiar with the BDSM community would immediately recognise. According to them, there are two important acronyms: RACK stands for Risk Aware Consensual Kink, and SSC stands for Safe, Sane and Consensual. They ask the reader to note the repeated word in both anagrams, and point out that this topic is completely ignored in the novels. A fact which, considering the reaction they have gotten, is a concern.
There is also also a comparison drawn to the “Philadelphia Incident” which concerned a younger, inexperienced female submissive who entered into a domination and submission relationship with an older dominant man in, you guessed it, Philadelphia. Her limits were violated and she was forced to enter into oral sex with the man against her will. Some people in the BDSM community are calling this rape. Whereas some people have suggested that the submissive woman consented, and others have criticised the submissive woman for not fully understanding what she was getting herself into. The young woman has now been run out of her home due to the criticism she faced.
As the Fifty Shades trilogy condones, and ultimately glamourises BDSM, it is concerning that if a young woman with no experience of BDSM was to make her way into the community and play with an older man when she herself was unaware of her own limits, very terrible things could happen, as demonstrated recently with the Philadelphia Incident.
In any case, I don't know much about that. I think perhaps these books are just a way for people to get off whilst feeling intellectual for reading a novel. Who am I to begrudge them that? I also think it's the thrill of the concept of dirt becoming popular culture, it's novel (pun). But if it's the thrill of being caught that you're into- from what I can tell, the statistical chances of a stranger catching a glimpse of a sex scene over your shoulder is very slim indeed. Sorry about that.
I'm just concerned with everyone. I mean, the third book is entitled "Fifty Shades Freed". THAT DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE.
Rant over. And for the record, I'm fully aware that my own writing style could be vastly improved- I'd like to make it clear that I'm not claiming I could write a novel.
L.
P.s. Apologies for being grouchy- I've got a two-day hangover. And for errors too- I'm tired.
