Don't fall prey to the Grey

At over 500 pages, I couldn’t figure out what all the fusswas about: extremely rich entrepreneur, handsome, rages to riches,perfectionist (well, almost) falls for bumbling, about-to-be college graduatethrough a chance encounter. She’s smitten but scared, he’s always confident,except when he’s not, and oh yes, he’s not into ‘relationships’ but prefers abit of slap-and-tickle.

So the book plods along as Christian Grey pesters ourprotagonist Anastasia Steele to ‘submit’ to his domination “ quite literally.He even gives her a contract, checklist, dos and don’ts (as well as a computer,car and a rare edition of Tess of the D’Urbervilles). Their email exchanges go on and on as Anastasia grapples with not wanting to be grappled, orhung, or whipped, or tied up and down.

If this is what turns modern women on, I’ve realized I knowwomen even less than I thought I did.

The scenes in question, which have caused so muchdiscussion, chatter, blog posts, tweets etc. seem long and uneven; well, maybethe author got that right.

So where does this all lead to? Not much really, it’s allback and forth; Christian stays the same for the most part, Anastasia has majorbreakthroughs in her head but ends up wanting them in other places and we aretaken on a whirlwind tour of the so-called modern-day no-strings relationshipconundrum. Unfortunately, it doesn’t move like a roller-coaster but more like amerry-go-round - constantly circling back to the same place where it started.

So the next time you’re at an airport and you happen to be ina bookshop, it’s probably best to just get a candy bar, a bottle of water and a Time magazine.