I haven't read it, but the descriptions above remind me of that other piece of rubbish literature, The Da Vinci Code. Here's something might interest you. It's from the Sydney Morning Herald; the heckler column is by readers submitting items about things that annoy them...
Hint of pain but little to gain in book
July 6, 2012
Opinion
HECKLER
AFTER seeing the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy dominating all Top 10 booklists for the past month I finally succumbed and read the first book. Boy, was I surprised - not by the salacious masochistic content, but by how badly it is written. Not since Mills and Boon claimed a passing glance in my teenage years have I read such cliched description complete with tick-a-box language techniques. The story is loosely about a ''complicated'' wealthy man who uses his coercive powers to ensnare a young virgin through erotic games where he plays the dominant and she the submissive. Apart from problems with a predictable plot line and stereotypical characters, it is difficult to get past the appalling prose.
We start with a revealing simile describing the main character Christian Grey: ''His voice is warm and husky like dark melted chocolate fudge caramel …'' moving on to an exhausted metaphor of Christian as an ''Adonis, divinely formed''. His admirer and sometimes submissive plaything Anastasia is overcome by Christian's ''dazzling'' beauty, her ''heart is pounding'' and, using a clever mythological allusion, she sees herself as ''Icarus flying too close to the sun and crashing and burning as a result''. She is so overwhelmed by her lover that her alliterative ''inner goddess glows''.
Like all economical writers, the author captivates us with the short sentence strategy. ''You. Are. Mine. Come for me baby,'' he growls. Inserting different text-types into the narrative - emails complete with personified shouty capitals ''GO TO BED'' keep up the intriguing banter between the enigmatic drop-the-first-name Miss Steele and Mr Grey. However, adding the text of the Contract which enables Anastasia to engage in the activities in the Red Room of Pain does get a little boring, what with its hundreds of Rules and Appendices.
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Christian's complex character is revealed as the novel progresses. Anastasia tells us that ''Christian has a sad side'' and through another apt simile, is ''Sad and forlorn like the music'' to which he listens. The recurring motif of Anastasia ''biting her lip'' foreshadows her obvious desire for Christian - although I was worried by the 15th reference that her lip would be irretrievably bruised and bleeding.
I guess that I expected more from a novel which has received such popular acclaim. Thinking that the pun in the title Fifty Shades of Grey was going to reveal a more multi-layered plot line was my mistake. So there it is, not grey but black and white. It must offer something to a large number of people, but who knows what that may be - no one can possibly be buying the book to enjoy good writing.
Kris Watts
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