“This is one HOT story! It is very well written” – Amazon Reader Review
“A great well-written story that keeps you wanting more” – Amazon Reader Review
“The next person to refer to Fifty Shades of Grey as well-written gets smacked with the Complete Works of Shakespeare” – The General Consensus On The Internet.
I’d like to take a moment of silence to remember the phrase “well-written”. The ailing, pallid, doomed phrase has officially been taken off life support. Cause of death: the destruction of the English language through the recent mainstream popularity of some of the worst literary garbage ever committed to print.
The latest winner in the race for banal bestsellers is E. L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey, which boasts the use of the verbs “murmur”, “mutter” and “whisper” approximately 450 times, leaving us to assume that the characters have permanent laryngitis. Welcome to the story of Anastasia Steele and the journey she takes with her two imaginary friends, “Subconscious” and “Inner Goddess”, whose favourite pastimes include doing the meringue, rolling their eyes at Anastasia’s complete incompetence as a human being, and creepily perving on her while she rides her supermegafoxyawesomehot “bagillionaire” boyfriend.
The adult content aside, this is truly the story of a woefully underdeveloped heroine with a severe case of stereotypical teen-movie insecurity, mild cases of “every boy ever loves me and I don’t notice” syndrome and a vocabulary limited to “Oh my!” and “Holy crap!”. She then falls for the hottest stalker ever, whose actions are apparently not worth pressing charges over because he is hot, gorgeous, hot, rich, hot and a supposed sex god. Emphasis on the ‘hot’. They then enter into the most sexually charged, painfully awkward and emotionally abusive relationship ever, based on the premise that he can change. Good luck with that. Really.
My morbid curiosity and evident masochism led me to read this book, and whilst it is advertised as risqué and provocative, the sex is the least shocking aspect of this trilogy. How did the most appallingly repetitive and mind-numbing novel ever released sell 31 million copies worldwide? Why does it no longer matter to society whether a novel is well written? How does anyone get so attached to a book when all I can do is cringe at every “Oh my!”? Surely there are amazingly written trashy chicklit books out there, unjustly ignored over this puerile garbage. Someone please. Find or write them now!
Finally, a helpful reading tip if you, like me, are masochistic enough to pick up this “novel”: when it becomes too much to bear the repetition of the same 3 scenes (fight, lust, sex) over AND OVER, just imagine them being interrupted by the Terminator mid-“release”. Now THAT’S literature. Hasta la vista, sex addicts.
