Fifty Shades review (with spoilers)

I finally picked up the Fifty Shades trilogy this weekend, and I will say I got completely hooked. The reader must be warned that it is a completely adult book, and that it contains graphic scenes, which I mostly skipped through.

The books are beautiful, engaging, addictive; but they have their flaws. So many people have complained about the seemingly lacking input of an editor in E.L. James' work and I find myself one of them. There are recurring statements, and I often got attacked with a feeling of déjà vu as I read the through the long, long story. Some of the scenes are almost repetitive, a replay of previous ones. In one way, this confirms in life how the path to healing may be difficult, warped, and include impossible impasses and relapses. But on the other hand, publication-wise it could have just meant the lack of a good editor.

Despite this, I’m happy to say that I saw real developments in the characters, especially in Christian's. Anastasia's starts out as an innately strong character although she doesn't see and realize this. As she goes through the most unbelievable and painful of situations with Christian though, she grows into this strength which spills over to Christian and eventually, finally saves him. 

I think basically the series was just a long, long complicated and well-developed romance. It takes thousands of pages to get to the HEA although the books actually take place within weeks to months from the point of view of the characters. Christian and Ana's relationship was a spark that threatens to ignite with their obsession and essential need for each other.

I had the singular expectation that this book was literary. It's been everywhere and I've been consciously avoiding it but was finally thrown and captured into reading it by good, funny Ellen Degeneres. She read this in in one of her episodes which made me, as per the usual, clutch my sides in laughter, and yes, fed my curiosity. So when I picked it up, I was stunned to find out that it was a romance; and not only that, that it’s actually an adult book that deals with BDSM. On that premise it is different—the first book I’ve ever read with such a theme. This normally would have put me off reading it. But I got sucked into reading it by the dynamics of the characters of Christian Grey, CEO of Grey Holdings and Anastasia Steele, young English Literate major who never should have met him but turns out to be his salvation.

At first, Christian appears broken. It’s I think in the second book where more details about his past are disclosed. But as his shrink says, Cristian happens to be a wonderful man who’s just had the misfortune of having a bad childhood. Grey refers to his biological mother as THE crack whore, the center of his gloriously dark past who forever has affected Christian's dealings with other people, even his adoptive family who have grown to wholly, irrevocably love him. Despite being rescued by a doctor and being adopted into the warm bosom of their [rich] family, Grey’s experiences as a toddler have forever ravaged him emotionally.

Essentially, he’s very domineering, who’s life is all about control. A very private person, he dropped out of Harvard after (during?) his second year and established his own business and later on becomes himself a very rich, established, worldly confident man. He confesses to liking winning, and that winning in business, with his very competitive character and shrewd intelligence, is very easy for him. And oh, he earns about 100,000 dollars per hour (:D). But he has issues. No man can never be an island surely, but Anastasia at the beginning thinks he might be the exception to the norm. In truth, Christian Grey is still actually a very hurt, devastated, and scared young man who copes with his pain in the way he knows and has been subjected to. He’s still the boy who’s afraid to be touched because his crack whore’s mother’s pimp? made him his ash tray one night. He may be very strong, but it actually so very vulnerable.

And so we have a strong but broken character who commands the world and his sexual relationships as a Dom[inant]. But finally, beautiful klutzy, with no thought for self-preservation, Anastasia steps in—or rather falls headlong into his life. At first, he’s attracted by Ana’s beauty, even more so because she’s a brunette—which leads us to another dark truth about Grey. There’s a reason why he insists on employing only blondes, for the benefit of sustaining only preofessional relationships in his company.

But Ana is so completely naïve, even so insecure, so young—is even a virgin—simply put, not the usual girl he usually plays out on the character of submissive in his weird, twisted ‘relationships’. He does not even see them as relationships, he sees them as a form of play or release where the other player is totally under his mercy.

And yes, Ana sees through him, from the beginning, and asks him ‘Are you a control freak?' Ana is totally alien to Christian’s world. She’s afraid of Christian, is tense when he’s around; but finds that she’s completely enamored by him and despite his flaws, realizes that she loves him. She's usually a benign character but finds herself viciously hateful of Elena Robinson, the woman who introduced Christian to the world of BDSM at the age of 15 and fucked (sorry ><) him up more than he probably ever was.

To be honest, I skipped a lot of pages, not just the sex scenes, which explains why I finished the three books in under two days. Some scenes I swear felt merely a rehash of previous ones, but with just altered dialogies. What I really love about the book though was the exchange between the two main characters. They leaped right out of the pages! I felt as if I was in the scene, watching these two interact--either in tension, or in guile happiness. I found myself laughing over the email banter between Ana and Christian, and how they progress from purely silted, formal, business-like emails to more fun ones, with ‘Your at the closing, to lots of X’s even Xoxo’s, and adjectives at the end, like Anticipative CEO, etc.

And because Christian is so filthy rich, he showers Ana with technology and the best his money can buy. An Audi (His reason for the car model? Because it’s among the safest being built), a Macbook Pro, even an iPad. At the beginning, though, providing his subs with these expensive gadgets and a rich lifestyle is but a given for him and part of the contract, but with Ana it happens to be a first. Christian, who has worlds of experience and cynicism, experiences a lot of firsts with Ana. Later on when he gives Ana an iPad, he's not just giving a device so easily bought with his money and so impersonally procured by his right hand, Taylor. It becomes a thoughtful and personal gift, formatted with personal pictures that hint of his developing feelings for Ana, songs that speak of the words he cannot say and express (he’s sorry and that he will try) that give Ana hope in their relationship, and a British library app that Ana just goes gaga over.

The trilogy is basically a story of Ana and Christian, and how they develop and find one another.

Christian and Ana love each other deeply, but sometimes love just isn't enough. At the beginning, trust is the biggest issue, on the roster with issues of self-acceptance and yes, self-love. Christian thinks he's just bad, underserving of love. He fails to see and recognize as Ana does his many sides.

He's her Fifty Shades.

Megalomaniac Christian too is philanthropic Christian. He's involved in a lot of charities and even his business investments and ventures are directed with the purpose of bettering the world and helping people. He fails to see that he is good, especially further justified by his descent to the dark world of BDSM, and the lifestyle he lives.

The Fifty Shades are character-driven stories. Not much action happens, but the relationship between the characters are the ones that really draw you in. For Christian, it’s mostly about his healing and how he gets over his self-abhorrence to later finally truly believe that Ana loves him and will never discard him, as so many have in his life. For Ana, it’s mostly finding herself, learning, and not losing herself in the process. At first she is revealed to have a lot of insecurities clouding her and just cannot believe why a man as gorgeous as Christian has fallen for her. She thinks Christian could possibly not have fallen for her if it were not for the fact hat he’s broken--which invites the professional curiosity of Christian’s psychologist. I really thought at the beginning that Fifty Shades would end a tragedy. But  it has a quaint, happy ending of Fifty Shades finally being freed, living a loving relationship with Ana and their children.