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Exactly and Precisely 5 Shades of Grey!

E. L. James recent novel Fifty Shades of Grey has taken the literary and not so literary world by a storm. It is the no. 1 bestseller in the UK and in many other countries; has critics writing endlessly on it and had a whole page dedicated to it in the prestigious Times magazine, now, this is quite a feat for a first time author to say the least, so what is it that makes the book a hit?

In my opinion there are exactly 5 reasons for it.

1. First and foremost it has the right attitude. Hmmm, you might to begin to wonder what that might be and whether a novel can have one at all, I say Oh, yes! Holy Crap! It can!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Miss Anastasia Steele ( ooo I love the name all so full of nuances) is an oozing mixture of Miss Elizabeth Bennet, Tess Duberville and certainly the demure Miss Jane Eyre, and Mr. Christian Grey, CEO of a zillion dollar company doing what not (and never really actually working regular hours) is a heady mix of a Greek God meets ready wit and brilliance of Mr. Knightly, the superb looks of Mr. Darcy and of course has just and not too much of dangerous element of Mr. Rochester. So we have the princess Anastasia, the virginal innocent lamb of the fairy tales in the hands of the dark Knight, and so the slightly modernized version of a Mills and Boons romance begins….

2. It fulfills the imminent desire of every woman (who was and is the gullible targeted audience of Ms James) of being swept off their feet literally in Charlie Tango or the Piper or on the 30th floor of an Ivory Tower. It is the assurance that there is someone stronger, more powerful and more resourceful to fulfill all one’s desired and yet undesired wishes! How about that? Not bad Huh? (What would not I give to have a personal clone of Mr. Christian Grey)

3. Then it’s the language. The colloquial and easy way it’s written in, that it takes exactly 50 seconds to read a page and hell you can even skip paragraphs and Wo! miss nothing because even the dialogues are repeated. And the amount of times the two main characters call each other out as Miss Steele and Mr. Grey you would think it fills like half the damn book, half way through, I was ready to pull my hair! You keep wondering if you’re reading a romantic novel or Ian Fleming’s series of James Bond.

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4. And, we come to the two most selling points – the domination and raunchy sex. YUP, whether we like to admit it publicly or otherwise we that is women want and have an urge, an internal primal instinct to be dominated in a rather protected and loved way as a mother or a father would do, we want to relinquish all responsibility for all our thoughts and actions and go to that point in life where all things could be resolved with a simple punishment and reward system that is easy to comprehend. The heroines of the classical novels all want to be dominated in a certain way, I haven’t read of one who wants to be courted by a wimp no matter how spirited she is so there we go, we want a manly macho man to come and take control over us, hell! in all this way and that.

5. Lastly it’s the page after page of sexy scenes which are basically repetitions of the same thing and get quite boring at least for me, but nonetheless makes compulsive reading for there is something about sex and all things forbidden that makes us want to go near them more and more.

As to the rest of the 45 Shades of Grey I’m sorry I couldn’t find them in the book or in the rather one dimensional Mr. Grey.

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