As much as I love it, it's no secret that reading has been on the very bottom of my to-do list the last few years. I manage to keep up on some blogs I love and sneak in the occasional novel once in a while, but for the most part recreational reading landed in the not-enough-hours-in-the-day category once Punky came along.
Over the last few months, I've read blog after blog about the book Fifty Shades of Grey and, to be quite honest, I reached a point where I was tired of hearing about it and I had no desire whatsoever to read the trilogy. First off, the biggest complaint was that it is poorly written, and I knew that in itself would make me want to gouge me eyes out. And the other hot topic, of course, was the intense sexual relationship at the very core of the plot.
But then I read that analysts are actually predicting a 2013 baby boom because of the immense popularity of the books. I read that seniors in nursing homes are devouring the trilogy. I read that thirty-year marriages are ending because women are demanding changes in their sex lives after years of the same old routine. Finally my curiosity got the best of me and on a whim I decided to take the plunge. Plus, it was the perfect excuse to try out the Kindle app I installed on my iPhone months ago but had yet to actually use.
If you haven't read the books but intend to, stop reading here as this post may contain some spoilers. And, Mom and Dad, if today happens to been the once-in-a-blue-moon when you actually come by and read something I've written, kindly hit the back button on your browser now to return to your bingo game or Facebook.
I started the first book shortly before our camping trip last month and the trilogy became a welcome distraction with all the crap that ensued in the following weeks. Just a few chapters in, I had to agree with the critiques about poor writing. If it weren't for the dark and mysterious character of Christian, I may have been tempted to quit reading, but I already needed to figure him out. The more I read, the less annoying the poor dialogue and repetitious vocabulary became.
On the whole, the characters are fairly unbelievable. Take Anastasia, for example. What twenty-one year old female in modern times doesn't own a cell phone? I mean, really. She's portrayed as the perfect picture of innocence and naive to the gills. Of course she's a virgin, in fact she's never even had a boyfriend. While finishing up her college degree, she buries herself in classic literature and her part-time hardware store job, and is apparently oblivious to the fact that a world of incredible technology exists all around her. She's portrayed as whiny and needy and child-like on one hand, yet in other respects she comes across much older than she is. Her character is a bit conflicting and confusing at times. One minute I'm rooting for her, and the next I want to punch her.
Then there's Christian, because gorgeous, mysterious, twenty-seven year old millionaires are a dime a dozen, right? Yes, Mark Zuckerberg is only twenty-eight, but he's not exactly a Christian Grey, is he? For me, Christian's character would be much more believable if he were forty. He's smug, arrogant, controlling, demanding, and sneaky, and even though those traits all end up attributed to his early childhood with his birth mother, the crack-whore as he so affectionately calls her, and his six years of submission to the infamous Mrs. Robinson, he still comes across as way older than he's supposed to be. In my mind, anyway. No matter how I tried, I couldn't envision a twenty-seven year old kid while reading.
Minus the poor grammar, conflicting character portrayal, and pages upon pages of sexual encounters, the underlying plot of the trilogy isn't bad. There are plenty of surprises and intense moments that leave you hiding in the bathroom to finish a chapter before your three-year-old can interrupt you for the hundredth time. Or maybe that's just me.
Now to address the big elephant dancing around the room in a tutu: Ana and Christian's sexcapades. Critics have called the book dirty. Religious zealots have called it sinful. Prudes of all ages have deemed it pornographic. I don't think it was really any of those things; I think it was real. Just because people in general don't talk openly about such intense sexual encounters doesn't mean they're not having them behind closed doors, or that the majority of the population only has missionary sex for the purpose of procreation. If that were the case, strip clubs, hookers, adult bookstores, and the world-wide web of pornography simply wouldn't exist.
Christian and Ana's sexual relationship is definitely intense. In the beginning, he's trying to mold her into what he's always known, and her innocence keeps getting in the way. Their encounters are always heated, overly passionate, often downright scary, and sometimes even a bit gross, but the one thing the critics fail to point out is that they truly are head over heels in love from the very start. Throughout the trilogy their sex life continually evolved, and by the end they seem to have it all figured out. Everyone has limits, sexual or otherwise, and they know each other on an intimate level that most people married for decades never even know exists.
The hardest part of the story for me was figuring out when exactly Christian made the transformation from jerk to Mr. Wonderful. In the beginning I didn't like him, even though he intrigued me. Every time I started to be on his side and think he wasn't such an a-hole after all, he'd screw up. By the end of the story I loved his character, but it was truly a two step forward/one step back process through all three books.
My absolute favorite part of the trilogy was the final epilogue at the end of the third book, especially the very last part where the author rewrote the beginning of the first book from Christian's point of view. It gave me the answer I wanted: Christian had feelings for Anastasia right from the moment they met. He wasn't really the selfish, arrogant, twisted jerk he seemed to be. Okay, so he was, but his intentions were good. And knowing that changed entire tone of the story for me just when I thought I had it straight in my mind.
Laters, baby.
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