readwatchdrinkcoffee's Reviews (382)

The first instalment in a trilogy of novels follows college graduate Anastasia Steele who meets and falls for a young business magnate named Christian Grey. But this isn’t a love story. Grey is a man consumed by the need to control. Powerless to resist his intimidating beauty, Ana soon finds herself signing her body away to fulfil his erotic needs. Desperate to get close to this secretive yet alluring man, she prepares to explore her own dark desires, as the couple embark on a passionately physical affair – the type that’s best kept behind closed, and locked, doors.

Centred heavily around the sex life of this couple, 50 Shades of Grey is a very raunchy book, which is the only reason it has been so successful. Many of us are admittedly reading it because we’re not getting any – or at least we’re not happy with what we are getting – so this is how we get our cheap thrills for a few hours. Whilst it does that well, it shouldn’t be getting the credit it currently is. Why not? Because it is no way well-written, developed, or told.

The biggest flaw of the novel is that it lacks any personal detail. The main character, Ana, is so underdeveloped that it’s hard to understand how an author managed to get away with creating a character with such little depth. Descriptions of anything apart from the feeling in between her legs are completely lost, and most of the time James can’t even find the words to explain that properly. But 50 Shades of Grey isn’t notorious for its elegant style of writing or powerful protagonists, is it? No, it’s known for making us feel a little hot under the collar and shy away from reading it in public.

Described by some as ‘Mummy Porn’, I do have to defend the novel in some way because, as a 21-year-old myself, I can agree that it tickles the fancies of us younger females as well, however minor. As a recent Journalism graduate looking for work in publishing myself – much like Ana – there is much of the story that I can relate to; I can easily picture myself in her shoes, but it’s why the book is getting the attention of the older ladies that is puzzling me. Whilst the sex scenes are written with all ages in mind, away from these scenes the story isn’t that great, as we are left with absolutely dire dialogue and not much else. My confusion comes from the fact that, as the book progresses, it begins to focus on adolescent emotions and becomes dominated by feelings of love rather than of the raw passion that it started with. There were many times that I felt the novel was getting too PG for its erotic nature – and I’m the same age as Ana’s character – so there really isn’t that much else going for it. Whilst I can appreciate that Ana doesn’t agree to Christian’s hard-hitting plan straight away and that she becomes persistent in trying to draw out his secret sensitive side, it quickly becomes too much like a high school romance. Yes it reflects well of Ana’s age, reacting in a way that is more believable than a twenty-something jumping straight in to the full pelts of whips and chains, but is this what we want from an erotica novel? Heading in the way of extreme BDSM, the novel would be allowed to get a little darker at times; it’s supposed to be sexy and daring, but unfortunately the couple’s emotions end up getting in the way far too often – especially at the end.

The novel’s second biggest flaw is the constant similarities it has with Stephenie Meyer‘s Twilight franchise. Developed from James’ own Twilight fan fiction, originally titled Master of the Universe, the relationship of Christian and Ana is very much the one created by Meyer between Edward and Bella. Here’s a few examples:
– how Christian constantly wants to know what Ana is thinking but he can’t read her,
– the way there’s something dangerous about him that no one can put their finger on,
– the way he wants to know everything about Ana and be in control of that,
– the magnetic pull that Ana feels for Christian that she finds impossible to resist,
– the way Christian always wants to do so much more but has to control himself,
– the way he turns up in seconds whenever she needs him,
– the fact that Ana is the first girl to meet his family because he hasn’t trusted anybody else.

This is Bella and Edward.

In some ways I can’t complain; 50 Shades Of Grey is what I both love and hate about the Twilight novels. When people always criticise the films I employ them to read Meyer’s novels first; whilst not a particularly well written series of novels themselves, the reason I enjoyed them was because of how well Meyer described this connection between Bella and Edward. There were constantly tense scenes where Bella and Edward wanted to take their relationship further but couldn’t because of the nature of the franchise, with the films, especially, relating to a much younger audience. With 50 Shades Of Grey, however, James was allowed to do what Meyer both couldn’t and didn’t want to; 50 Shades of Grey is Twilight with sex, with Ana losing her virginity quite early on in the book so that it could develop her desires to explore her sexuality further. Unfortunately, it doesn’t.

We are again headed back to the fact that the subject of sex is 50 Shades Of Grey‘s best – if only – quality, but even these scenes are not always well written. Whilst they are at times quite erotic, there are three ways that James manages to constantly ruin these moments of intense pleasure, just as you find yourself divulging into them.

1. James never uses the word for vagina, or any word remotely similar. I lie, she actually says ‘vagina’ once about half way through the book, but as for the hundreds of other times she references that part of the body, she uses the words ‘there’ or ‘my sex’, both of which sound ridiculous mid-dirty sentence.

2. The use of italic comments in between sentences. Whilst these comments give an additional insight into Ana’s mind, usually describing the battle between her voice of reason (her subconscious) and her voice of desire (her inner goddess), adding a certain depth to the story, the phrase “inner goddess” itself becomes irritating beyond belief. Furthermore, these comments also show the more childish side of Ana’s personality, with comments such as, “He’s so freaking hot“, reminding us of young her mind is, with sentences such as, “My inner goddess is thrilled. I can do this. I can fuck him with my mouth“, making you question why you’re enjoying this novel at all. Such italic comments do not fit in with the rest of the novel, again only diverting our minds from the raunchy sex to something much more boring.

3. The most annoying for me -the phrases “Holy shit” and “Oh My”. The first time I read these words I cringed at how off-putting they sounded around the descriptions of heavy breathing and nipple biting, but they somehow manage to creep into almost every paragraph. Again written in italics, these phrases are said far too often and end up making you lose what little interest you had.

Here’s an example using all three:

“I gasp. Not taking his eyes off mine, again he runs his tongue along my instep and then his teeth. Shit. I groan… how can I feel this, there.”

Together they just completely ruin the moment.

In the same way that these phrases are repeated in the novel, James also often repeats whole chunks of dialogue, the biggest examples being Christian’s constant comments about Ana always biting her lip and then of Ana always commenting on Christian’s smile or him ‘cocking’ his head. In a way these sentences are some of the sexiest descriptions in the novel, allowing the reader to make a decent image of what the character’s are both doing and feeling, but they are again mentioned at least once in every chapter, which means they start to lose their impact pretty quickly. The sex scenes, too, become quite samey, with Christian always complimenting Ana’s scent and soft skin, as if they are the only compliments that James has ever been given to draw on. There may always be a new position or sex toy that the couple use, but in the end it’s just Christian giving three big thrusts and Ana shattering into tiny, orgasmic pieces.

With sentences such as, “He’s my very own Christian Grey flavor popsicle“, 50 Shades of Grey turns out to be more cringey than sexy, and the plot does get completely ridiculous in places, but I will definitely have to read the final two parts, even if it is, yet again, just out of further curiosity.

Boyne’s novel is a distinctive and inspiring story. Told from the perspective of an eight-year-old boy, and centring around one of the biggest and brutal events in our history, The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas handles its subject matter bravely and uniquely, but it does open up some contextual flaws.

What we need to remember with this book is that the holocaust is merely a backdrop. If you’re expecting a factual and historically correct account of someone’s experience in an extermination camp, then you are going to be severely disappointed. With this young perspective from a character who knows very little about the war and what the Germans were doing, the story doesn’t divulge into anything beyond Bruno’s very narrow understanding. Quite ignorantly, these horrible things are just happening somewhere in the background, and that’s only as far as Boyne really goes. His novel is more about a young boy’s naivety, setting in motion something he had no control or understanding of whatsoever, and the Holocaust makes for an excellent setting for that. The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas is more a really uncomfortable children’s adventure than a Holocaust drama, and we need to remember that to keep our expectations at that level.

Furthermore, this naive perspective opens up a number of other minor flaws that we must again put to the back of our heads, for instance: if there was a gap in the fence which was left unmanned, then why were people not using this as a means of escape? There are many points that seem quite unrealistic or outright incorrect, but you do have to consider that the book is fictionalised due to having a young narrator, telling a story that he knows nothing about. As adults, ones with time to better educated ourselves on this event, we can fill in the gaps for ourselves and put the story into its tragic context, but we can’t expect any more from it.

Whilst the story is incredibly impressive, I did find the writing somewhat frustrating. Boyne once commented that he wrote the entire first draft of the novel in only two and a half days, barely sleeping until he got to the end. This, for me, feels very obvious, often feeling rushed as Bruno’s story rambles on. I found it constantly repetitive, referring to insignificant points that had already been mentioned to distract away from the seriousness of the main events of the story, making me want to skip through whole paragraphs to see some progression. Again, having such a young narrator means that the writing won’t be of a high standard, and the repetition is used because Bruno’s mind would be working in that way, but it just wasn’t a style of writing that I enjoyed reading.

It’s definitely no fault of the narrative style, either, as Alice Sebold does it brilliantly in The Lovely Bones, as does Emma Donogue with Room, both keeping their writing and narrative styles to a high standard whilst using a young person’s narrative, but Boyne’s novel didn’t have the same effect.

Another flaw I found with the writing was due to the spoken languages. Written in English, based on German-speaking characters, there’s a lot of talk about how Bruno doesn’t understand a number of German words. He often says that he thinks Der Führer is “The Fury”, that Auschwitz is “Out-With”, and that “Heil Hitler!” is a fancy word for hello. But his misunderstandings are as if he were English-speaking, which feels a little reckless, overall.

That being said, Boyne has written a brilliant story, despite many writing and language flaws. The best thing to come from this book is the excellent film adaptation that followed, directed by Mark Herman and released in 2008.

For me, the film handled the emotional ending of this book much better.