Fifty Shades of Grey - book review

Beware, it’s going to be nasty…

Funnily enough all reviews of the book in the Polish press somehow escaped my notice and it was mother from who I learnt about its existence and all the hype surrounding it. With hindsight I can tell there’s far more hype than it’s worth… OK, don’t I put cart before the horse…

It’s kind of hilarious my mother asks me whether I heard about recently translated into Polish, world-wide recognised erotic novel, which many deem to be the best-selling porn book ever. My mother found out about the existence of the book at the local library she visits frequently and signed up in a queue for the only copy of that book. So far, she has not borrowed it…

I turned out to be too impatient to wait weeks and too reluctant to spend over 30 zlotys on a book I’d read once (with hindsight – it’d sell on allegro for 20 PLN easily) and felt insecure about the quality of the translation (so much can be done into awkwardly, much can be lost), so I took a dive into search engine and within a quarter found a copy of original edition, put some scratch paper into my printer and came into possession of “Fifty Shades…”

“Fifty Shades…” are just a first part of trilogy. I went through it and despite having two other stored on my hard disk, I totally don’t feel like exploring their content… It took me four weekends to read all 26 chapters, while many readers found the book so riveting they read it from cover to cover without putting the book away.

Shortly before Valentine’s Day I saw in it EMPIK among books on love. Love… Maybe much depends how you define love, I differentiate it markedly from desire, affection, sex, romance, fascination and other feelings and phenomena by means of simplification are often called love, but this is not a book about love. Putting it into such category seems to be a misunderstanding.

Having read the book, I find the extreme popularity of the book even more mind-boggling and its content anything but mind-blowing. Actually it has to be noted the book is really popular with women, while I read only one review of it written by a male and this “work of art” (watch out, overstatement in use) can bring about nothing more than erection - means “Fifty Shades…” have more or less the same cognitive value as a cheap porn film…

Curiosity killed the cat – I admit this was the first erotic book I read, and, without avowing, will quite likely be the last one. The book doesn’t lack the plot, but frankly speaking I found it too hackneyed, predictable to make the reading worthwhile. The narrative style of writing is often hard to follow and several times made me lose thread. Vocabulary used is in some parts exquisite (from 300 pages I learnt some 20 new English words), but generally, some words and expressions repeat far too often and descriptions of sexual practices strike with their simplicity (maybe it could be put down to the fact the heroine is just discovering sexual pleasures and loses her virginity as the story unfolds) and coarseness (I found the use of word “fuck” to describe intercourse absolutely unacceptable).

If anyone looks for a book about love… I’d rather you refrained from reading this at all. If you want to have a try anyway, I recommend you borrow it rather than buy, will be just a waste of time, but will save your money. What in my view best describes what the book deals with is “perverse fascination”. From the first page the relationship between the two main characters of the book is anything but normal. Right, there situations in life when you are enchanted with somebody the very moment you meet them for the first time. In the popular culture it’s called “love at first sight”; in my books this is a misnomer, as people grow to love with time, whereas what crops up at first sight might be only desire or fascination. Back on the track – I don’t find it conventional to found a relationship on a written contract stipulating rights and responsibilities of both parties and naming one of them “Dominant” and one of them “Submissive”. Well, truth be told I’ve never found such division of roles exciting, maybe I lack testosterone and this is the reason why the book doesn’t take my fancy.

I think I’m reaching the core – most readers found detailed (although crude) descriptions of sex most appalling in “Fifty Shades…”, while they simply didn’t strike me much. Maybe indeed many people’s sexual lives lack diversity, experiments, spontaneity and they blushed when reading about what the missed. What I found most dreadful passed unnoticed in all reviews and comments I read online, both in Polish and in English – it’s the book’s heroine, Ana Steel’s mindset – what she feels at certain stages of fascination of her totally unrealistic relationship with Christian Grey. Most women so captivated by the book identify with what she experiences and dream of being in her skin and as a man I’m horrified by their hidden dreams and stifled desires!!!

Christian Grey seems ideal and at first sight already unreal. A 27-year-old man might be extremely handsome and captivating, but will never be as rich beyond compare as Mr. Grey, CEO of Grey Enterprise Holdings Inc. is. Actually taking into account how much he buys Ana and how she (reluctantly) accepts these gifts, she at least appears to be his mistress (near the end of the book she realises it looks that way), not to call her a whore. But on the other hand Mr. Grey has a dark side – his broken psyche – he is unable to build a normal relationship with a woman. Do some women dream of having their relationship with a wealthy, handsome man governed by a contract setting do’s, don’ts, limits and obligations? Do some women dream of giving their partners pleasure by letting them cause them pain? It generally goes beyond my comprehension how a human can take (sexual) pleasure in causing somebody pain…

But as not all men dream of long-legged, big breasted, slender long-haired blondes dressed in low-cut top and mini skirt (I don’t), not all women (I hope!) have likes of Christian Grey as objects of their fantasies. This conclusion is quite reassuring, provided it holds true. If it’s not, and I can’t check it, I should probably settle on celibacy by the end of life, as by no means I don’t fully resemble Christian Grey (although on the other hand I’m not totally far cry from this character), and I don’t dream about being like him…

Once there was a Polish book, also very popular with females, “S@motność w sieci” (literally: “Loneliness online”). I read it in early 2004, prompted by my girlfriend and for some time, being under her spell, enjoyed it. Just after a while it sank in to me this was also a cheap novel, yet still I’d rank it much higher than “Fifty Shades…”. The Polish book at least was indeed about love, there was little sex in it; feelings, taken apart, were always in the foreground at least I understood why women were so fond of it and why they wanted to live through an affection with Jakub, the main male character of the book.

I shall discuss the content of the book with some people who I know won’t be ashamed to talk about this “forbidden fruit”, but I’m unlikely to change my mind about it. The fascination with the book, which according to one of the interviews with its author, who said it depicts her unleashed fantasies, just proves humans have an animal spirit lying dormant deep inside. If humans can’t contain these primeval instincts, their existence is profoundly worrisome, but at least prevents the mankind from extinction…