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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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