Fifty ShadeA co-worker of mine lent me her copy of Fifty Shades of Grey.  I have to admit that I was intrigued about this book considering its origins as Twilight fan fiction and that it was getting so much hype as a bestselling novel.  I’m so glad that I didn’t spend money on this book.

The first person narrative reads like a young angst-ridden teenager, not a college educated young woman on the threshold of complete autonomous adulthood.  The main character, Ana, constantly second guesses herself and undermines her own self-worth even though she constantly refers to an inner goddess.

The prose also reads in the vernacular of a teenager with random thesaurus-plucked words thrown in.  Whomever copyedited this novel for American readers did not do their research as Americans do not call the meat department in the store a ‘meat cabinet’, we don’t say things are ‘cheeky’, and I have never heard anyone in the States call a condom in a wrapper a ‘foil wrapper’.  The descriptions get very repetitive, the sex scenes are way too frequent and not steamy to me in the slightest, and the interjected antics of Ana’s inner goddess are quite distracting.  The copyeditor also didn’t catch that Christian took his coat off twice in the same scene and that he was naked then spontaneous had pajama pants on without getting dressed.

I think that if E L James had done some research into what an inner goddess actually is, this book would have turned out very differently.  Instead of Ana allowing Christian to seduce her into the world of BDSM, which she knew nothing about and actually repelled her, she would have turned and run.  Ana’s inner goddess wouldn’t have allowed her to get misused by Christian instead of cheering Ana on as she let herself get flogged and spanked, among other things.

If you take out all the sex scenes in this novel, you are left with only part of a novel.  I have a feeling that if you take the whole trilogy and omit the sex, then you may be left with a whole novel.  If I am offered to borrow the other books I may try to read them; it’s like being unable to look away from a train wreck.

I think that only redeeming part of this novel were the emails exchanged between Christian and Ana.  They were witty and flirty and I enjoyed watching the subject lines change with each exchange.

As I said, I’m glad that I didn’t spend money on this book.

Laters, baby.