Fifty Shades of Cliches: a UCTMW Book Review

Slave had grown tired of all these news articles about the run-away, kindle stuffing,  word of mouth erotica blockbuster, Fifty Shades of Grey over these last few weeks.

First there was the cover story on the New York Times that caught my eye. Then the snarky column by Maureen Dowd casting aspersions by citing her pal who she claimed was a bona fide dominatrix. (Some of us wondered whether she was quoting herself!)

This week it was  a Newsweek cover story psycho-babbling about  the needs of women to submit as a reaction to the "liberating" stresses of feminism. And there was a counter article in Salon by a purported Domme about the fact that "guys like it too!"  The Entertainment magazines are already casting the movie for us.

So when I saw the whole danged "Fifty Shades" trilogy on sale at the airport book stall last week on my way to DC, I decided it was time for me to put on my UCTMW book reviewer hat and see what the fuss was about. I picked up the first book in the trilogy, and finished it over the weekend.

It was a quick, amusing read, but rest assured that I will not be acquiring volumes 2 and 3.

What we have here seems to be a cleverly marketed cult classic wannabe by author  E L James, "a former TV executive, wife and mother of two", which has all the narrative stylings and linguistic finesse of a Nancy Drew book layered with a veneer of soft core porn.

While her books has been described as  a hit with the housewife set, it is written as if  the target audience is teenaged girls. Think the Vampire books, but substitute for the devastatingly handsome vampire an even more  devastatingly handsome, impossibly rich, 27 year old amateur concert pianist and pilot, named Chrsitian Grey, with  a "Red Room of Pain" in his Puget sound view luxury condo, tricked out with all the bondage parephenalia one could dream about.

 Instead of longing to suck the blood from our virgin  heroine,  recent college grad and English major, Anastasia Steele, this guy would rather tie her down, spank her ass and  force multiple orgasms from her awkward but shapely young body.

What teenaged girl could resist this fantasy?

But the heroine in this book does way too much agonizing, even as she wallows in all those cums, not to mention the stylish Audi, priceless first editions, new Mac Book Pro and sophisticated  wardrobe our hero/villian lavishes on her. All he wants her to do is sign a contract of submission for a three month term, not unlike the one between Slave and Mistress here at UCTMW. But this "contract" has so many out clauses it seems hard to complain about.

And yet.... despite multiple rounds of negotiations, and plenty of concessions from Mr. Grey (only three nights a week? sure baby) , she never can get to "Yes", despite what she describes as her undying love and attraction for her would be Dom.  She just wants "more", can't he understand that?

Particularly annoying for those of us who dabble in this "lifestyle", is that the author seems to go out of her way to judge Mr. Grey for his lovely kinks, while fully exploiting all those kinks to sell her books.

How to explain his perversion?  Well, he was the son of a crack whore, who put cigarettes out on his chest, until he was adopted by a wealthy couple from Bellevue.  But just when things were turning the corner for poor little Christian, he was seduced at 15 by some "witchy" house wife, aka "Mrs. Robinson", who "abused" him as her "sex slave" for a few years until her hubbie discovered their secret.

How come my neighborhood didn't have any women like that as an alternative to the Boy Scouts?

Mr. Grey a guy who can't handle being touched. But he obsesses about "hurting" poor Anastasia before forcing yet more orgasms from her.

So despite all of those hot sex scenes, tossed in every 12 and 1/2 pages or so, the hard part of reading this book is all the angst in between, as poor Ana battles her nagging "subconscious" and "inner goddess", depicted as two little mini-Anas, with one telling her to hold out for "true love" , sans a sore ass, and the other telling her to grovel her way to sexual glory.

Gag.

And then there are the cascading cliches that one has to suffer through to struggle to the end. How many times did I have to read that Mr. Grey "found his release" (but, of course,  only after Ana was "shattered" by her own breathtaking cum)? 

How many times did I have to learn that Ana was intoxicated by the scent of Mr. Grey's freshly washed hair and body wash?

WTF.

What self respecting Dom uses "bodywash"?  Irish Spring, Dial  or Ivory aren't good enough?

 I suspect these books will endlessly circulate through high school lockers and college dorms over the next 5 years, earning E L James countless millions, particularly from the movie rights. But the discerning readers of UCTMW can do so much better when they reload their kindles.