Fifty Shades of Grey: one shade of ridiculous. Twilight fan fiction gets durty

| Apr 30, 2012

I'd read the first few pages of Fifty Shades of Grey and already I was laughing. Laughing so hard it hurt. Was it a joke?

"What are you laughing at?" said Himself. "What?" he said "What?"

"This book" I spluttered "ITS RIDICULOUS! It's filthy durty and the plot is so thin you could spit through it"

Then I started to read bits out to him. Basically the plot is as follows. Anastasia is a naive, innocent - but breathtakingly beautiful - college grad who has made her way through college without ever having kissed a man or EVER being drunk. These two - quite frankly unbelievable - facts set the scene for the ludicrous events to come.

Ana interviews enigmatic, breathtakingly handsome, self made billionaire Christian Grey. With more shades of grey than the Farrow and Ball catalogue, he's a Master of the Universe in more ways than one. (Masters of the Universe was the original name of the series)

Within about three pages and one date he has "taken her", shown her round his S&M dungeon, handed her a contract to be his Submissive AND they're discussing safe words, hard and soft limits, whips and punishments AS THOUGH ALL THIS WERE PERFECTLY NORMAL for an innocent 21 year old virgin.

Emails are zinging back and forth discussing in "witty" detail the finer points of the contract, she immediately begins calling him "Sir" and every two pages or so there is a sex scene so ridiculous that Anna's cat Ju Ju could have written it. No offense to Ju Ju obviously.

He's a control freak with smouldering grey eyes and a sexy cigarette scarred body. For example:

She gets a job. He buys the company.
She flies across America to get away from him for a few days. He fires up the Lear jet and follows her there for a bit of filthy how's yer father.
He tracks her phone and supplies her with a new Blackberry and Mac Book all the better to do it with
He takes one look at her banger of a car and instantly buys her another

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Main themes

Extreme control freakery (Christian)
Eye rolling (everyone)
Mind blowing orgasms
Sipping delicious glasses of white wine (type varies according to Christian's eclectic but excellent tastes)
Inner goddess gymnastics
Grey Eyes. Mentioned at least one million times. One mention per page min.

If you haven't read the book - read this hilarious synopsis instead. It sums it all up in a few paragraphs and means you probably won't have to bother.

"We can't understand why it's so popular" say the publishers of these works of erotic literature. "It's just incredible". Read this report for more background. Time Magazine have recently named James one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Her book signings are mobbed. The books are topping the best seller lists.

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

Well it's the Twilight effect. The author started writing Twilight fan fiction online and Fifty Shades of Grey just... er came to life. If you will. So just mentally cast Robert Patterson and Kristen Stewart as the two protagonists and bobs your uncle. James bases the two main characters on them - read more about how the books came into being here.

The big question now is though who will actually play Ana and Christian in the movie? Ian Somerholder of The Vampire Diaries (above) is a hot contender -and his eyes are GREY.

So that's that then.

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This book is so bad it's brilliant. Who else is going to admit they've read it? My inner goddess will be cartwheeling one handed around the Olympic stadium if you let me know!