Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian

by E L James

Overview

"Portions of this book, including significant parts of the dialogue and e-mail exchanges, have previously appeared in the author's prior works"--Title page verso.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101946343
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	06/18/2015
Series:	Fifty Shades Trilogy
Pages:	640
Sales rank:	36,863
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

E L James is an incurable romantic and a self-confessed fangirl. After twenty-five years of working in television, she decided to pursue a childhood dream and write stories that readers could take to their hearts. The result was the controversial and sensuous romance Fifty Shades of Grey and its two sequels, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed. In 2015, she published the #1 bestseller Grey, the story of Fifty Shades of Grey from the perspective of Christian Grey, and in 2017, the chart-topping Darker, the second part of the Fifty Shades story from Christian’s point of view. She followed with the #1 New York Times bestseller, The Mister in 2019. Her books have been published in fifty languages and have sold more than 165 million copies worldwide.

E L James has been recognized as one of Time magazine’s "Most Influential People in the World" and Publishers Weekly’s "Person of the Year." Fifty Shades of Grey stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 133 consecutive weeks. Fifty Shades Freed won the Goodreads Choice Award (2012), and Fifty Shades of Grey was selected as one of the 100 Great Reads, as voted by readers, in PBS’s The Great American Read (2018). Darker was long-listed for the 2019 International DUBLIN Literary Award.

She was a producer on each of the three Fifty Shades movies, which made more than a billion dollars at the box office. The third installment, Fifty Shades Freed, won the People’s Choice Award for Drama in 2018. E L James is blessed with two wonderful sons and lives with her husband, the novelist and screenwriter Niall Leonard, and their West Highland terriers in the leafy suburbs of West London.

Editorial Reviews

06/29/2015
In this mediocre erotic romance that lacks both passion and intimacy, the events of Fifty Shades of Grey are retold from Christian Grey's perspective, allowing readers to see inside the mind of the enigmatic, domineering businessman as he seduces and falls for college student Anastasia Steele. It's a perfect portrayal of an unhealthy relationship, as Grey, here shown to be an immature, self-loathing sadist with mother issues, attempts to lure a sexually inexperienced young woman into an ill-considered, unconvincing BDSM arrangement for which she's not suited. Furthermore, in switching vantage points, James sadly demonstrates a glaring inability to depict a convincing male perspective. Grey's inner voice shows him to be obsessive, possessive, insecure, and needy, with a tendency to treat and view Ana like a child rather than an adult potential lover. This version mirrors the source material so well that it adds very little to the story, merely filtering the events through a less sympathetic lens. "Yeah, yeah, baby, it's just a face and it's only skin deep. I need to dispel that admiring look from those eyes, but let's have some fun in the process!" thinks Grey upon first meeting Ana, and it's all downhill from there. Agent: Valerie Hoskins, Valerie Hoskins Associates. (June)

Publishers Weekly

2015-06-22
Fifty Shades of Grey, from Christian's perspective. Anastasia "Ana" Steele stumbles into billionaire Christian Grey's office and clambers her way into his heart despite his need for domination and her need for self-preservation. As James promised her readers, this book tells the now well-known story from Christian's point of view, which means that large swathes of the original novel featuring contact between Ana and Christian—conversations, emails, and the infamous "binding contract between the Dominant and the Submissive"—are essentially copied and pasted into this one, with Ana's first-person narration taken out and replaced by Christian's. What's surprising is how distant and hazy Ana feels, considering how Christian jumped off the pages of the original and how James made us feel connected to his struggles as seen from Ana's perspective. Christian is tortured and enigmatic, which was one of the strengths of Fifty Shades, but his narration lacks subtlety and insight. He continually simplifies his attraction to Ana, referring to her as hot or sexy and saying he wants to dominate her, without any indication that he appreciates the way she's resisting his domineering instincts—or maybe he does appreciate it but still wants to dominate her, which would make it feel even more like a bad high school relationship in which the senior tells the freshman "I really like you, but you're not what I'm looking for, so please change." Christian comes across less as damaged hero than self-centered juvenile bordering on icky creep, which definitely erodes his sexy mystique. James' storytelling here is tedious, repetitive, and sometimes even cringe-worthy. This new take on a familiar story would have been more powerful if Christian had shown the self-awareness and ability to change we saw through Ana's eyes in the original. Die-hard fans might argue this gives us something new, but it doesn't—and it's boring.

Kirkus Reviews

James’s blockbuster earlier novel featured the explicit sexual awakening of Anastasia Steele, under the tutelage of the wealthy, compelling Christian Grey. This sequel tells the story from Christian’s point of view. Narrator Zachary Webber has just the right voice to deliver scene after scene of hot sex. As the arrogant, self-assured captain of industry, Webber is perfect. His timing and pacing are spot-on, and his portrayal of Christian as an abused kid is heartrending. The ironic tone he gives the adult Christian works well as a counterpoint to his breathlessly innocent portrayal of Anna. While the email banter in both books borders on the pedantic, Webber manages to make it complement the narrative. Lovers of “50” won’t be disappointed. M.C. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

SEPTEMBER 2015 - AudioFile