Grey review – EL James revisits her tawdry S&M saga

This shameless recycling of Fifty Shades, with Christian Grey as narrator, is unlikely to turn anyone on

Bloggers have already published sequels to EL James’s Fifty Shades of Grey online, so it’s understandable that James herself should want to share in the exploitation. She knows her 125 million customers well, and doesn’t underestimate their gullibility. She is therefore selling them all over again the same item they’ve already bought, though in a new package. The principle works well enough with detergents, so why not apply it to soft, squishy BDSM porn?

The Fifty Shades trilogy offered Anastasia Steele’s gushing account of her enslavement to the masterful tycoon Christian Grey. After 1,500 pages the series ended with Christian’s version of their first meeting – not an embrace but a credit card transaction, as Ana charged $43 to Christian’s Amex card in the hardware store where he stocked up on bondage tackle. Now, in the absence of other ideas, James plods through the whole tawdry, teary saga again from this point on. Grey is not a continuation; instead, it lazily recycles the previous books, with Christian replacing Ana as narrator. Their inert dialogue and goofy email exchanges are cut and pasted verbatim, which lightens James’s workload. As added extras, we are promised access to Christian’s “thoughts, reflections and dreams”.

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