I think you would have to have been in a cupboard if you have never heard of this book or have a rough idea what it is about or more importantly what it contains! Because my challenge to myself is to review all books that I read, I have had to force myself to do this one so here it goes:
Anastasia ‘Ana’ Steele is a young innocent virgin just graduated from university, her formative years spent with her head in books. Suddenly she encounters Christian Grey – the man who has everything, including the dashing good looks to go with the money. He is a dominant force within the business world. And it is not just in that part of his life that he wants to be dominant. Christian wants control everywhere that is until he meets Ana, who he wants to control but Ana wants to know more in fact she wants that more that he has never given in the past. What is it about Ana that changes this dominant? And will she actually submit to him? Will Christian’s past hold him back from submitting to Ana?
The sexual relationship which is dominant (pardon the pun) in this book fuels many of the pages, it was very repetitive and in fact at times quite boring. Here we go again, hurry up and get to the point of the story I thought. And quite frankly how big are Christian Grey’s pockets as there seemed to be “foil packets” galore spilling from them.
There is the basis of an interesting storyline and I was fascinated by Christian and why he behaves as he does. However, you need to filter out all the other stuff and about 200 pages of the book plus the repetitive writing and you probably have a decent piece of fiction. I will admit to actually not liking Ana to begin with, I felt her weak and ineffectual and although she should probably have asked for a refund in terms of her inner goddess she somehow penetrated (sorry another pun not intentional) Christian’s psyche and made him perhaps see that dominance is perhaps not always a good thing. Then I changed my mind about her until the end of the book and questioned her actions. However at the moment this has not given me enough incentive to pick up book two. I have read the book and can be counted in the statistics, enough said!
I really do not know where I stand on this book. I normally do not read ‘in’ or ‘hype’ books because everyone else is. I may well buy them, but then read them months if not years later. However, because it was my next book club choice, it had to be done.
I think because since I finished it I have read two books and during it I read two books, gives you an idea of what I really thought of the book! Having discussed this book with a few people, I can see that it is a book you either like or don’t. The Marmite effect if you will. I also think, that because I read a lot I am comparing the writing to other books. The sexually graphic scenes did not bother me but got quite boring in their repetitiveness. I keep coming back to the use of language, structure and length of book. The technicalities if you will. I recognise that actually beneath (as I say in my review) all the sex there is a very interesting story line and it was that the fundamentally kept me going to the end.
Have you succumbed to the hype? Or are you really just not that bothered?
It is going to make interesting discussion at my book club, (which I will report about on here) and I think whilst there has to be discussion about the book – there has to be something about books, PR and hype too!
The Book Jotter 