Immediately, attempts were made to measure its impact. or something.” The New York Times said it was “like a Brontë devoid of talent”, while Salman Rushdie said: “I’ve never read anything so badly written that got published.”
Much was made of the power imbalance between Grey and Steele: after years of fighting for equality, did modern women secretly want to be tied up and forced to submit? Was it a feminist win or deeply regressive? The critics guffawed at lines such as: “His voice is warm and husky like dark melted chocolate fudge caramel. The world was fascinated by its success, as it often is when something enjoyed by women and girls breaks through.
They get married and Grey decides he no longer wants to inflict pain on his wife. He opens up about his childhood trauma and becomes more loving. There are helicopter crashes, crazed exes and a kidnapping. They dance an uneasy line between kink and domesticity in penthouses, fancy restaurants and expensive cars. Slap and tickle ensues (read: a lot of slapping and not much tickling). She wants to date him, but he wants to employ her as his newest submissive. But alongside the huge number of copies sold, was there a lasting cultural influence?įor the uninitiated, here’s the story: Anastasia Steele, a 22-year-old college student and virgin, meets 27-year-old billionaire and BDSM fan Christian Grey. Worldwide, by 2015, more than 150m copies had sold, with millions more ebooks on top. (The fourth biggest-selling book, Jamie’s 30-Minute Meals, sold 1.8m.) At its peak, two copies of the first book sold every second for a time, the UK ran out of silver ink, thanks to its use on the books’ covers. In the UK alone, Fifty Shades of Grey sold 4.7m print copies, Fifty Shades Darker sold 3.3m and Fifty Shades Freed sold 3.1m. Late last year it was announced that they had been the runaway bestselling books of the decade. The trilogy by EL James, the writing moniker of the British author Erika Leonard, was published between 20. “I’m getting it for my wife,” men announced, unprompted, while women – often younger than the label “mummy porn” suggested – would recount whole conversations with unnamed friends who had deemed the erotic thriller “quite good”. I soon amassed a range of excuses from customers who so often seemed to be embarrassed to be buying what everyone else was buying. I was working as a bookseller when Fifty Shades of Grey was published and spent weeks stacking shelves with the glossy tomes, only for them to be whisked away as soon as they arrived.
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