Fifty shades of holy crap

Holy crap! I promise you I did not post this picture upside-down intentionally. But now that it's done, I see that it suits the mood of this piece perfectly. This is not my usual kind of blog post, so why should it have the usual kind of picture? 

I prefer to write about books I love rather than books I don't, simply because there are so many good books I want more people to read - and so many bad books I wished less people were reading. Bad books don't need blogs to help them sell, do they? 

But every once in a while a bad little book comes along that just won't be ignored. Actually three bad little books in this case, and sorry if that sounds too much like the three little piglets in the fairy tale, but the whole publishing phenomenon of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy has become something of a fairy tale. At least for the author, EL James, who was utterly unknown barely a year ago and has now sold tens of millions of books in dozens of countries. And she achieved all this with a saucy fairy tale about a virginal student princess named Anastasia who is kissed (and spanked and flogged and beaten) into sexual awakening by a powerful prince of the business world named Christian Grey.

Good for Ms James, I should say. Anyone who knows me would tell you I'm all for transforming fairy tales into more transgressive genres. My biggest problem with Fifty Shades of Grey, though, is that it's all pseudo-transgression, with endless talk about sadomasochistic practices leading to very little action on that front. Most of the erotic action is of the so-called 'normal' kind - that is if you find it normal for a very recently 'deflowered' girl to have mind-blowing orgasms at the drop of a hat while maintaining a constant dialogue with her 'inner goddess'. The worst that can be said of the sex scenes is that they tend to be described with too many unoriginal adjectives and far too many exclamation marks.

As one reviewer wrote, 'suffering through 500 pages of this heroine's inner dialogue was torturous, and not in the intended, sexy kind of way'.

Basically this is M&B with S&M - old-fashioned Mills and Boons spiced up with a bit of Sadism and Masochism - boosting all the classic ingredients of those romances: innocent heroine meets fatally attractive/powerful/rich/brilliant hero (in the case of the incredible Christian Grey, all of these adjectives apply) with a dark and difficult past; he saves her life (repeatedly, throughout the trilogy, in the case of the incredible Christian Grey) while she saves his soul; and love conquers all. You don't have to read all three books to know that Anastasia and Christian will end up getting decently married and living happily ever after. While still enjoying kinky sex, of course, just to make sure all readers get the point that nothing beats the pleasures of the conjugal bed. Or floor. Or whatever.  

OK, enough already, before I start sounding like a cynical and sexually frustrated wife. I've heard that the trilogy has added spice to the boring sex lives of many married couples, for which Ms James also deserves praise. As for me, I prefer novels that are well-written, with believable characters and situations, and sex-scenes without inner goddesses interfering all the time. And whatever else Fifty Shades of Grey is, well-written it is not. 

'Clunky prose', some reviewers call it, but clunky doesn't cover it. Cringe-inducing is more like it. Believe it or not, but this erotic heroine's favourite exclamation - and boy, does she love exclaiming! - is 'Holy cow!'. When she's feeling more daring, she uses 'Holy crap!'. When she loses it completely, she shouts 'Holy shit!' and occasionally even 'Holy fuck!'. I mean, really. 

So, good for Ms James and all her millions of female readers who dream of being dominated in bed or in life, but count me out. I certainly won't be reading the rest of the trilogy. Sometimes, as far as books and sex go, once is indeed enough.   

Betting on books

If I was the gambling type, I might have made a quick buck this month with some clever literary bets. Two of my favourite novels of the past year have just been crowned with two major literary prizes. And I'm not saying this with the wisdom of hindsight; I've got my blog to prove it!

In May I posted a piece on an Afrikaans novel which impressed me so much that I simply had to share my enthusiasm with as many people as possible, even though this blog usually deals only with English books:  http://www.maritareadingspace.blogspot.fr/2012/05/what-wonderful-circus.html And last week my enthusiasm was richly rewarded when Sonja Loots's Sirkusboere won the South African M-Net Prize. Well done, Ms Loots.

Even bigger and better is the Man Booker Prize which was won by Hilary Mantel - once again! - for Bring up the Bodies, about which I raved in my previous post: http://www.maritareadingspace.blogspot.fr/2012/08/bring-up-books.html With this achievement Mantel becomes the first woman to win two 'Bookers' and the first author to be crowned for a novel (Wolf Hall) as well as its sequel. Brava to the marvellous Mantel.

But all this trumpet blowing is actually just a way of easing into a rather embarrassing confession. Because when it comes to the biggest literary prize of all, also announced this month, I've bombed completely. To my shame I've never read anything written by the Chinese winner of the Nobel Prize,  Mo Yan. To be perfectly honest, I didn't even know his name until last week. Although if I'd been the gambling type, I would have noticed his name on the Ladbrokes list of possible winners, with the rather high odds of 8 to 1.

Although not as high as the odds against Bob Dylan (12/1), whom I would have bet on if I was into betting. Not because I believed that he would win, but because I would have really loved it if an old rock 'n roll poet won this most respectable of all prizes. So if I had to bet on the Nobel Prize, I would certainly have lost whatever I might have made with the M-Net and the Man Booker.

Thank heavens I'm not the gambling type, after all.

Bring up the books

How does she do it? How does Hilary Mantel take a tired old piece of history that everyone in the Anglo-Saxon world knows - the story of the terrible King Henry VIII with his many wives - and transform it into a thrilling literary page-turner?

And not just once. She did it with Wolf Hall, which won the Man Booker Prize in 2009 and seduced millions of readers all over the world. She does it again with the sequel, Bring up the Bodies, which deals with Anne Boleyn's fall from glory and Thomas Cromwell's irresistible rise and rise. And I'm willing to bet she'll do it again with the third novel in the trilogy - for which I, for one, can hardly wait.

Which brings me to the next question: How did Hilary Mantel turn me into an avid reader of historical fiction? Into someone who can't wait for a sequel? Because, just for the record, I've never been interested in historical fiction and I don't do sequels.

Alas, I can't answer any of my own questions. All I can say with certainty is that Bring up the Bodies enchants the reader from its striking first sentence ('His children are falling from the sky') to the very last few phrases: 'There are no endings. If you think so you are deceived as to their nature. They are all beginnings. Here is one.'

What an ending! Or should I say beginning?

More questions. How does Mantel transform the infamous Cromwell into such a likeable character? And she does this, astonishingly, without hiding his greed or his hypocrisy, his cruelty or his callousness from the reader. She just somehow polishes his image, places him in context, makes the reader understand his mind. Mantel even manages to turn King Henry VIII into, well, not exactly an admirable character, but not completely despicable either. She shows him to us as a product of a specific time and a particular place, like Thomas Cromwell, so that his obsession with having a male heir to secure the safety of his realm doesn't seem quite as selfishly stupid as we thought.

Mantel brings her marvelous eye for detail to the many minor characters too. If this was a movie (as it will probably soon be), it would have a huge cast of unforgettable characters. Though none as unforgettable as Cromwell, for whose role I already have a certain broody dark-eyed British actor in mind. I wonder if you can guess who?

Something else. I read most books in paperback versions - for practical and economic reasons - but with Bring up the Bodies I was too impatient to wait for the paperback. I read Fourth Estate's beautiful hardback version with the gold-leaf cover and Anne Boleyn's 'little neck' on the endpapers. Which of course just added to the pleasure of the experience. But I have to ask myself: How did Mantel manage to make me so impatient?

I'm beginning to suspect that Ms Mantel might have some magical powers. But please don't repeat this. As you know, poor Anne Boleyn was also suspected of witchcraft, and look what happened to her. Fact is, I want this admired author to write the sequel, as soon as possible, and I really don't care if she uses sorcery or black magic to do this.

As long as she keeps writing, so we can keep reading.

Bring up more books, Hilary Mantel!