Don’t you just hate peer pressure? I do. I refuse to follow the crowds. I do not own an i-Anything… my phone is as good, if not better, and I bought a no-name-brand Android tablet for $200 rather than spend the Grand required for an iPad. While it may not look as trendy, it does the job and I am not a slave to the Apple God.
Call me a rebel. I prefer to think of it as retaining my individuality.
But sometimes I get curious to see what everyone is making a fuss about. Case in point: this weekend I finally caved and read Fifty Shades of Grey. I have purposefully avoided reading the reviews up till now (other than the first two listed on Amazon, where I bought the eBook, and may I say, both were less than flattering!) so I have no idea what the consensus is other than what I have heard from friends who have also read this monstrously successful novel. So what you have here is my humble, untainted opinion…
As a female reader, I found it compelling reading (let’s face it, how many men do you know who enjoy romance novels?).
As a writer, it took me a while to figure out exactly why I kept turning the pages, because I’m not normally into kinky stuff. Scratch that; I am not into kinky stuff, period. In fact I skimmed over some of the more… um… unorthodox bits.
But those bits did not put me off enough to stop reading.
Why?
Because beneath all the lust and… etcetera… exist the basic elements of good writing: tension, humour, conflict, complex emotions and a protagonist with whom we can identify. But the thing that drove me to keep going to the very end was probably the skillful use of questions – many asked, some answered, but always one driving question raised right near the start that the reader needs answered, i.e.
… Spoiler Alert! …
… Will she, or won’t she?
It takes skill to string people along for the length of an entire novel on one question.
I also like that Fifty Shades of Grey is an entire, self-contained novel. I may or may not read the second and third in the trilogy. This first one ends in a satisfactory place. I would be happy to go through life believing that is where it ended. Thank you for that, E.L. James.
Then again, I did grow rather fond of the characters this weekend, and I feel like they’re hanging out in my subconscious, nudging me gently … Go on… you know there’s more… admit it… you want to know what happens next…
So who knows? Perhaps my curiosity will get the better of me once again.
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