Fifty Shades of Grey - Didn't Have Me Tied Down

Warning - I'm going to talk about sexuality.  Knowing full well my mothers and friends read this, I'm giving you the chance to click that red X in the corner lest the idea of me broaching the topic of erotica, sexuality, and the social impact of literature gets your panties in a twist ... and not in a good way.

For the rest of you still hanging out, thanks for being curious :)

Fifty Shades of Grey by EL James is taking over the bedrooms of bored women across the nation, or so the headlines have been screaming.  The book charts the complex relationship of Anastasia Steel (literature student) and Christian Grey (wealthy entrepreneur).  It's the classic story of unworldly, slightly clumsy, doesn't-know-she's-hot girl meets experienced, dark, I'm-in-need-a-therapist hot guy.

The twist, if you're not aware, is that instead of your run-of-the-mill romance novel steamy scenes, EL James lets her readers explore a slightly darker gamut of sexual expression in the world of dominant/submissive, accompanied by some light bondage, a touch of flogging (not in the Spanish Inquisition sense), and a few spankings.  That would be BDSM (bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism, masochism) and all of the ensuing combinations.

I'll kick off my review with this statement - sexuality is not fixed or binary, it is highly personal, and as long as you and your partner set the boundaries and are honest with each other, what you do with and to each other is your own damn business.

If you think erotica is porn, well, I'm surprised you're still reading this.  I could devote another post to explaining the difference, but porn is visual and leaves nothing to the imagination.  Erotica is sensual and requires imagination on the reader's part.  The difference is profound - porn is a 10-minute quickie whereas erotica is a drawn-out seduction. 

Back to Fifty Shades.  This book started out as online fan fiction for Twilight.  Oh yes, the main characters were once Bella and Edward.  The influence is easily discernible, which may put you off or pull you in.  

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To her credit, James readily admits she's a novice writer.  Which makes it easier for me to gently agree with her.  This is not a wonderfully written book.  A chunk of my editor brain was having fun mentally taking a red pen to the text as I read.  This sentiment applies both to the relationship portions of the book and the "I might blush here" sections.

I also easily tired of our narrator, Ana.  She's young, innocent, exploring her sexuality for the first time (she starts out as a virgin), and is written accordingly.  She can't bring herself to talk about her or Christian's body directly; instead she refers to down there, his erection, or the apex of my thighs.  She constantly says holy shit! when something arousing happens, which gets annoying because it seems so juvenile.

Despite my literary beef with the execution, it distresses me that the media sharks out there have dubbed this work mommy porn  <shudders>  There are so many things wrong with that term - it's sexist, disparaging, and dismissive.

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Granted, this very heterosexual, very white book is not going to cut across all demographics, but to throw such a label on it is repulsive because it seeks to shame any woman (or curious guy) from picking it up.  On that premise, I defend the book for making sexuality more approachable, even if you've innocuously downloaded it on your Kindle or Nook and no one sees the cover (which in print form is also deliberately unremarkable). 

To be honest, this is Introductory Erotica.  Unlike most of the user-submitted stuff you can troll for online, Fifty Shades at least had some quality control, but there's better stuff out there.  If you've never tasted this taboo genre before or are already a closet Harlequin reader, I endorse this for you.  But if your sexuality is more robust, this will leave you unsatisfied.