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Thursday, July 2, 2015
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com ARTS
Likability lost in perspective of ‘Grey’
BOOK REVIEW
“50 Shades” follow-up
highlights abuse and
ridiculousness
By CHLOE GILKE
Managing Arts Editor
In August 2008, Stephenie Meyer
broke the hearts of a million pre-
teen girls. Some jerk leaked the first
12 chapters of “Midnight Sun,” her
highly anticipated follow-up to the
“Twilight” series, and this betrayal
squashed her creative muse so thor-
oughly that she swore she’d never
finish writing the book. The news
broke my suggestible, Cullen-loving,
14-year-old heart. I’d wanted more
than anything to relive my favorite
romance from another point of view
— to dive into Edward’s brain and
excavate his thoughts and blossom-
ing feelings for Bella and resurface
with a complete history of their love.
The “Fifty Shades” film took
me by surprise earlier this year,
needling its way into my subcon-
scious. Despite its problematic
relationship politics and Chris-
tian’s poor characterization, I fell
as fast for these two as I did for
Edward and Bella seven years ago.
Lucky for fans of “Fifty Shades of
Grey,” E.L. James is not Stephe-
nie Meyer. A few weeks before its
June 18 publishing date, James
announced that she’d rewritten
“Fifty Shades” from Christian’s
perspective. “Grey” would be
a welcome surprise — after all,
it’d been three whole years since
James wrote the last installment
of her trilogy, and media hype
had quieted significantly. The
coming sleepy afternoons of mid-
June would be the perfect time to
awaken my inner goddess and take
a trip into Christian Grey’s fifty-
shades-of-fucked-up head.
“Grey” does not deserve those
summer afternoons. “Grey” does not
deserve to occupy a single second of
your time. “Grey” certainly does not
deserve 559 pages of paper from thou-
sands of beautiful trees and $9.89 of
your hard-earned money. This book is
trash in its purest form, nearly impos-
sible to read through layers of stinking
bullshit and lazy writing that makes
the original “Fifty Shades” look like
“Pride and Prejudice.”
Part of the appeal of reading this
story from Ana’s perspective is that
the reader could also get swept up
in the mysterious allure of Christian
Grey. The reader knows what Ana
knows and sees what Ana sees — a
gorgeous and super-rich guy who
wanted to have lots of hot, weird
sex. “Grey” features the exact same
story and dialogue as “Fifty Shades,”
which is not surprising given that
this is a rewrite of a book that already
exists. But just in case anyone want-
ed to call out Ms. James for putting
approximately zero work into writ-
ing “Grey,” she adds an additional
layer to the story. Christian Grey is a
complete fucking psychopath.
Reading from his point of view is
uncomfortable, to say the least. In
the time spent away from Anastasia’s
hula-dancing subconscious, we see
that Christian daydreams of abusing
women he’s barely talked to, has lit-
tle regard for consent and is obsessed
with smelling Anastasia Steele’s
neck. Christian objectifies Ana from
the moment she arrives in his office
to conduct that fateful school news-
paper interview. He fantasizes about
her “inviting” mouth, the blush on
her cheeks, her sweet blue eyes and
“fine ass.” There’s nothing roman-
tic about deconstructing a woman’s
appearance, and it’s amazing that
James assumes that women will
read this passage and still think of
Christian as a flawed, but ultimately
romantic, hero.
James tries to justify Christian’s
behavior by providing his backstory.
He’s scarred by the memory of his
drug-addicted mother, who spent
half her time neglecting Christian
and the other half unconscious, and
her abusive boyfriend. He has recur-
ring nightmares of being a four-year-
old boy in Detroit, sitting on the floor,
pushing his toy cars around and hid-
ing from the scary man who hits his
mother right in front of him. The ter-
rors quiet when he sleeps beside Ana,
but still he refuses to indulge her
idealistic “hearts and flowers” vision
of love. Christian rebuffs her every
time she asks to touch him (as he
repeats about once every other page,
he “cannot bear to be touched”) and
whines when she wants to make love
on a bed instead of in his playroom.
Ana looks silly through Christian’s
perspective. She just doesn’t get that
he’s got this sob-story childhood
and that the BDSM lifestyle saved
his life. She’s a “frustrating woman”
for not understanding that Christian
just isn’t hard-wired for the kind of
affection she’s looking for. While
Christian claims to appreciate Ana’s
stubborn personality and insists that
she is in control of their relationship,
Christian constantly undermines
her decisions and actively stalks her
until she changes her mind.
All this would be more tolerable
if the book weren’t so damn boring.
From the writer who brought you
50 pages of e-mail correspondence,
this is … 50 more pages of the exact
same e-mail correspondence. Yes,
the countless passages outlining
the e-flirting and e-stalking that
every reader loved in “Fifty Shades
of Grey” make a reappearance here,
and you might as well skip that half
the book, because they are still dull
as hell and make no sense. You would
think that the CEO of a multi-million
dollar corporation would have the
common sense to text his main piece
to ask where she is instead of pester
her with dozens of e-mails every day.
And there is plenty of boring new
material as well. Because Christian
is the CEO of a multi-million dollar
corporation, his days mostly con-
sist of e-mailing business execu-
tives and making vague plans for
construction. There is an entire
subplot about Christian decid-
ing whether to build in Detroit
or Savannah, and it is completely
pointless. He sometimes orders his
coffee black, and sometimes a latte
and it’s always an exciting buildup
to see which one Christian will ask
his housekeepers and assistants to
make him. To add to his serial kill-
er persona, Christian spends copi-
ous amounts of time working out,
taking showers and engaging in his
aesthetic routines. (Christian Grey
might actually be Patrick Bate-
man.) James is obviously trying
to add world-building detail, but
no one really cares that Christian
likes to listen to Springsteen when
he drives and the Black Eyed Peas
when he runs.
Christian Grey should have been
a compelling narrator, and “Grey”
should have been an entertaining (if
insubstantial) novel. But in expos-
ing the mystery of what’s going
on in Christian’s head, E.L. James
reveals that there’s really nothing
interesting to see there. The abusive
tendencies that were alluded to in
Ana’s version of the story become
more explicit and impossible to
ignore. Anastasia, the series’ strong-
willed heroine, is disenfranchised
in Christian’s crudely disrespectful
retelling. These enormous missteps
might be forgivable if “Grey” com-
mitted to being trashy and fun, but
the story is painfully dull and the
writing just stupid.
Maybe Stephenie Meyer had
the right idea in keeping Edward
Cullen’s thoughts in his head and
off the page.
UNIVERSAL
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