SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES
Why you should return ’50 Shades of Grey’ if you got it for Christmas
Dec 21, 2012, 5:14 PM | Updated: Dec 28, 2012, 11:09 am
Originally published as Twilight fan fiction, 50 Shades of Grey tells the story of a college student who meets a reclusive Seattle billionaire. (AP Photo)
(AP Photo)
Lisa Foster, filling in for Dori, hates 50 Shades of Grey more than any other book, ever. And now that Christmas has come and gone she knows there will be dozens of women who unwrapped the book on Christmas morning.
“I was furious at the book, and it wasn’t that I just didn’t like it or said ‘that’s just not for me,’ said Lisa. “The first reason was the writing was eighth grade-level writing.”
There have been dozens of articles written on the erotic novel that credit it for helping middle aged women open up about their sexuality. Many people consider it the book that’s made erotica more main-stream.
But does that make it a good book?
Lisa thinks the bad grammar and repetitive phrases more than overwhelm anything good about the book’s plot.
Sentences like “I looked at him from underneath my lashes” and “Christian set his mouth in a grim line” repeat page after page after page.
“Even if you only read the book for the good parts – and there’s about 14 really steamy, juicy parts,” said Lisa, “even those were so poorly written that you still wanted to gouge your eyes out with red hot pokers.”
News anchor Maura Gallucci couldn’t even finish the book because it was so tedious.
“I feel so good today because I though I was the only, only woman in America who started and didn’t finish that book,” said Maura.
Producer Tina Nole disagrees. She liked the book. Though she reads a lot and considers herself a literary snob, she was able to get past the bad writing because she liked the outlandish plot and felt like she really got inside the head of the main character. She compared the book to ‘Pretty Woman’ with Julia Roberts: it’s not Oscar material, but it’s fun if you can buy into the story.
“There’s a lot of reasons to hate the movie ‘Pretty Woman,” said Tina, “because it romanticizes prostitution, but that suspension of reality – the pretty woman who gets swept off her feet by the rich man and has this romantic fling and learns a lot and changes and you hear her inner dialogue and her conflict that she’s trying to figure out.”
