by Anna Roberts
Kate is in Barbados. José has a photography show. Dickfacehead sends Ana roses, e-mails her, offers to pick her up and take her to the photography show and she agrees because the alternative is sitting in front of a brick wall staring at her thumbs. It’s kind of apt that neither of these fucking morons understand the phrase ‘I don’t think we should see one another any more’ or understand any aspect of breaking up with someone beyond the annoying moping; after all, this entire book was written by a woman who doesn’t seem to understand that words mean things.
Torturous memories flash through my mind – the gliding, holding hands, kissing, the bathtub, his gentleness, his humor and his dark, brooding, sexy stare.
Ana is clearly remembering a different man to the one in Fifty Shades of Grey – you know, the asshole with no sense of humour whose ‘gentleness’ extended to bawling her out when she forgot the safeword.
I miss him. It’s been five days, five days of agony that has felt like an eternity. I cry myself to sleep at night, wishing I hadn’t walked out, wishing that he could be different, wishing that we were together. How long will this hideous, overwhelming feeling last? I am in purgatory.
Yep. It’s not going to get any better, folks. Ana decides that she is in love with Dickfacehead and then starts puzzling over why he is like he is – is it because he had a terrible childhood and his mother was a crackwhore? Probably. If only she could fix him with the power of love.
Ana steals Kate’s dress and boots to go to the gallery, generously bequeathing her veruca in the process. Ana is awful.
Dickfacehead is also awful. First thing he does is interrogate her about her diet and she stares at her fingers and whines. They get into the helicopter. It doesn’t crash; a little part of me dies inside.
Blah blah, did we mention he was handsome and had a helicopter in the last book? Oh, only five hundred times, well, let’s recap. He says that just because they broke up doesn’t mean he can’t take her out to dinner.
YES IT DOES, DICKFACEHEAD. THAT IS WHAT BREAKING UP WITH SOMEONE MEANS.
They go to José’s art show – Ana thinks catty thoughts about every other woman in the room, as usual, then throws her arms around José and flirts with him to make Dickfacehead jealous. Remind me again why we’re supposed to like any of these characters?
José’s a creeper and has taken a bunch of candid pictures of Ana in various moods. Must be a boring set of pictures because she has about two settings – Default Self-Loathing or Horny.
She switches to Horny when Dickfacehead kisses her.
He breaks off the kiss, panting. His eyes are luminous with desire, firing the already heated blood that is pounding through my body. My mouth is slack as I try to drag precious air into my lungs.
"You. Are. Mine,” he snarls, emphasising each word. He pushes away from me and bends, hands on his knees as if he’s run a marathon. "For the love of God, Ana."
The movies of these books are going to be hilarious – just saying.
Chapter Two
Dickfacehead and Placeholder go to a restaurant. Dickfacehead orders steak and chips twice, clearly taking a page out of my parents’ book about what constituted fine dining back in 1979.
He is also spectacularly rude to the waiter. I’m willing to bet that Dickfacehead has probably eaten a fair amount of strangers’ bodily fluids over the years, since he appears to have forgotten the fundamental rule that you should never be rude to the person who is preparing your dinner.
Ana has also forgotten the other fundamental rule - never fuck people who are rude to receptionists, waiters or the staff at the drive-through.
They moo at one another about missing one another and wanting to get back together and I have the cast of Monty Python and the Holy Grail yelling GET ON WITH IT in my head. Of course they get back together. It’s only chapter two.
And he threatens to hit her, and not in a sexy way.
“So help me God, Anastasia, if you don’t eat I will take you across my knee here in this restaurant and it will have nothing to do with my sexual gratification.”
So, senseless random violence then. Now I really hope the chef jizzed in his bearnaise sauce.
Blah blah car, music. Oh fucking hell. Having shat on several lovely pieces of classical music (and poor Britney, who has surely suffered enough) Dickfacehead has now dragged Giacamo Puccini into this whole horrid mess. STOP LIKING GOOD THINGS – THEY’RE NOT FOR YOU.
In a stunning twist that nobody saw coming, Dickfacehead and Ana get back together.
"But I’m a selfish man. I’ve wanted you since you fell into my office. You are exquisite, honest, warm, strong, witty, beguilingly innocent; the list is endless. I’m in awe of you. I want you, and the thought of anyone else having you is like a knife twisting in my dark soul.”
Of course, anyone who was any of the above would be either laughing or retching at this little speech, but because Ana is a weak-willed, duplicitous narcissist who could lose a battle of wits with an ice-cream scoop, she’s bowled over. Immediately she sets to unravelling his cardboard psyche by asking him about his mother. Apparently Dickfacehead was stuck in a room with his mother’s corpse for four days. Also the author is a fan of Dexter.
Oh, and he’s bought her an iPad. Ana is over her dislike of expensive gifts but is categorically, one hundred per cent, absolutely, definitely NOT a gold-digger. Got that? Good.
Ugh. Of course Dickfacehead likes Coldplay. Still, I shouldn’t complain. Better that he gets his bland jollies to ‘content providers’ like Coldplay than real music. These things are for you – carry on, shitlords.
Oh God no they’re e-mailing again – already. Oh fucking hell.
Oh – phew. It was only a brief exchange. Nothing of interest transpired in that e-mail exchange, you’ll be pleased to know, nothing besides the fact that it’s June 10th. This will become important later on.
Chapter Three
Ana’s boss Jack tells Ana she looks ‘radiant’ and Ana thinks he’s being inappropriate. He is, of course, being inappropriate because every other man in these books has to be some kind of slavering rapist in order to make Dickfacehead like a relatively nice boyfriend. (Spoilers - it doesn’t work.)
"Can you read these for me and have reports on them by lunchtime, please?" He hands me four manuscripts. At my horrified expression he adds "Just first chapters".
How has she worked for this guy for nearly a week and still doesn’t understand how slush reading works? Well, we’re about to find out. Jack Hyde has to be an aspiring rapist because otherwise he’ll just look like a put-upon boss, and Ana is not exactly employee of the month. The first thing she does when she reaches her desk is start e-mailing her boyfriend.
She has a pastrami sandwich for lunch. I’m sure you needed to know this. I did. Fucking riveting stuff. In a sane world this is the kind of thing that gets shitcanned after a cursory glance by the slush reader.
Ana smugs it up talking about Dickfacehead’s eclectic taste in music;
I wander back listening to a classical piece, Fantasia on a Theme By Thomas Tallis, by Ralph Vaughn Williams. Oh, Fifty has a sense of humour and I love him for it.
He doesn’t, and I hate him for it. Incidentally, I loathe how E.L. is constantly smacking us over the head with how ~cultured~ Dickfacehead is.
Oh, and after lunch she e-mails her boyfriend some more! She e-mails him to say she is bored and twiddling her thumbs! Couldn’t you just shit with excitement? He e-mails back to say he could think of something else to do with her thumbs and that he’s ‘doing the usual humdrum mergers and acquisitions.’ For a highly driven workaholic he doesn’t do much...you know...work. He also says her e-mails are being monitored. This is probably a plot point but who gives a fuck even at this early stage?
And there’s a girl – standing outside the office. She is definitely a plot point. This is Leila, aka Golumette, a former sub of Dickfacehead. She’s there to add drama and indicate what happens to a woman when her vagina is no longer
being graced by the magic, life-giving, sanity bestowing presence of Dickfacehead’s cock.
Jack says Ana is very bright and will go far, so he almost definitely wants to pork her because Ana is a workshy dumbass who can’t even find something interesting to say about the slush pile. Dickfacehead is an asshole to Jack, and it turns out that Dickfacehead is Jack’s new boss, and Ana’s. Yes, Dickfacehead has bought the publishing company.
Ana is angry. “I mean, what kind of responsible business executive makes decisions based on who he is currently fucking?”
Stopped clock, blah blah. (And in answer to Ana’s question - ‘One in a poorly written book.’)
She’s really angry, you guys. So angry that she sulks all the way home. But when they get home she figures it’s probably okay because some kind of tripswitch has gone off in her weird little mind and it’s Fuck O’Clock. Then he tries to get her to eat and she makes a hilarious joke about not being hungry...for food. This was an old joke back when Voltaire used it in Candide but I doubt E.L. James has read Candide; if she had it would have been co-opted as yet another prop for Ana’s supposedly towering intellect.
Although to be fair nobody has mentioned Tess of the D’Urbervilles yet. Which is nice.
And blah blah blah. A large portion of this book, like the first, is taken up with these joyless, charmless shitbirds negotiating what they can and can’t do to one another in bed. He can’t be touched in certain places, and I couldn’t give a single partially liquid shit. Then it turns out they haven’t got groceries and so they go to the supermarket for a paragraph and Prince Fuckpants turns up his refined nose at the wines because they don’t have Chateau Yquem 1953. This is supposed to be part of some ‘delayed gratification’ scenario but we all know it will end in someone ‘shattering’ or ‘exploding’ like every other time they’ve bumped uglies.
Also it totally doesn’t matter that he bought out the company where she works. Then they cook dinner together and I want to tattoo the words KILL YOUR DARLINGS on the inside of E.L. James’ eyelids. I am so fucking bored already.
“...I explode, magnificently, mind-numbingly, into a million pieces around him, and he follows, calling out my name.”
Called it.
Chapter Four
The only thing worse than Dickfacehead and Ana sharing dull conversation about their various unconvincing issues is Dickfacehead and Ana sharing what the author probably refers to as ‘witty banter’.
“Thank you for the iPad.”
“You are most welcome, Anastasia.”
“What’s your favourite song on there?”
“Now, that would be telling.” He grins. “Come cook me some food, wench. I’m famished,” he adds, sitting up suddenly and dragging me with him.
“Wench?” I giggle.
“Wench. Food, now, please.”
“Since you ask so nicely, sire, I’ll get right on it.”
Seeeeeee? Isn’t it precious? If he talks old-fashioned like in Shakespeare and other ‘Classic British novels’ then it doesn’t matter that he’s basically saying “Get in the kitchen and make me a sandwich, bitch.”
They eat food (This is exciting, isn’t it?) and then Ana’s sex timer goes off again and it’s FUCK O’CLOCK, only this time they decide to get freaky with a tub of vanilla ice-cream because he agreed to try a ‘vanilla’ relationship and it’s a joke you guys oh my God he’s so fucking witty I think I just shit my panties.
Desire, dark, sleek, and wanton runs hot through my veins. We’re going to have fun, with food.
The only wanton thing about this yawnfest is the Oxford comma abuse.
He ties her to the bed, slathers ice-cream on her tits and cooch and probably gives her a yeast infection. Good. Then they indulge in some post-coital chit-chat about how great they both are and he invites her to a charity ball. Then they go to sleep and wake up when Ana has one of those helpful revelatory dreams she’s prone to whenever the plot starts sagging. In the dream she saw herself switched places with Golumette. Apparently Golumette attempted suicide in book one, while Dickfacehead was stalking Ana in Georgia.
Then they go back to sleep again and wake up in bed because we have to document their every single movement, except when they do their wee-wees and their poo-poos because the yummy bookclub mummies can’t masturbate to that. Dickfacehead makes several expository phone calls about Golumette and then sets Ana up with his personal trainer, which is presumably his way of telling her she’s a skinny-fat hooker. I say hooker because he’s dumped over twenty grand in her bank account overnight but they fuck again and she’s over it because he’s pretty and he makes her woo-woo tickle.
ALSO SHE IS TOTALLY NOT A GOLDDIGGER NUH UH.
Then she wants to get her hair cut. I don’t know about you, but this rivals the pastrami sandwich revelation in terms of excitement. Ana also thinks that she needs ‘to buy some floaty skirts for work’, presumably so she can look bohemian and literary even though she still wouldn't recognise the plot of Tess of the D’Urbervilles if it punched her in the face, threw her over its shoulder and hooked her up to a car battery. Every time I think I can’t hate this girl more she just goes and ups the ante. It’s rather special.
The beauty salon has a BLONDE on reception and as we all know, when Ana sees a blonde she reacts like a cat menaced with the ironing spray. Even worse, the whore-faced flaxen-haired slagbitch has the barefaced blonde whore nerve to bat her skanky blonde eyelashes at Dickfacehead.
She is also wearing ‘very pink lipstick’. That fucking slut.
She then asks Dickfacehead if Ana is in for ‘the usual.’ Yes, Dickfacehead owns the salon and used to bring all his previous subs here to have their minge-hair torn out to his specifications. Isn’t he delightful?
Oh my God – there’s another blonde in the room. She’s beautiful, and she’s touching him. Ana is about to flip her shit and so am I, because for the first time ever E.L. James finishes a chapter with an interesting cliffhanger – it’s Mrs. Robinson!
Chapter Five
Mrs. Robinson’s real name is Mrs. Elena Lincoln. She is the glamorous child-molester who introduced Dickfacehead to badly-researched BDSM when he was just fifteen and for once Ana’s instincts are spot on. She wants to leave and Dickfacehead thinks it’s because of the paedophile in the room, although it’s also because she doesn’t particularly like the idea of getting her hair cut where he used to bring his previous identikit girlfriends to have their pubic hair removed.
Dickfacehead admits that it’s fucked up and then his phone rings and he’s like ‘Killed in a car-crash?’ by way of exposition. Golumette’s boyfriend was killed in a car-crash and Golumette has since gone mental and is now stalking Dickfacehead. This is basically Christmas for Dickfacehead because he can now control Ana’s every move in the interests of keeping her ‘safe’. Also because he’s Edward Cullen.
Ana makes a list of terrible things about Dickfacehead, including the fact that he knows her bank account number. That right there would be grounds for bye-byes and a restraining order all on its fucking own, but there’s also the fact that he not only threatens to drag her places by her hair but also insists she go to the beauty salon he’s been using for many years as his own private Fuckateria.
But she’s a moron and we’re only on chapter five, so there’s a whole lot more of this ridiculousness to come.
Golumette has obtained a concealed weapon’s permit (against the laws of Washington, Oregon and logic) and now probably has a gun, so it’s time for security overdrive and so Ana has to go to Dickfacehead’s apartment. Luckily there’s already some clothes there for her, including a $3000 evening gown and cocktail dresses. Who the fuck wears cocktail dresses? Also she wonders why Golumette was a pale skinned brunette like her, and why all his other subs were brunettes. Could it be a plot point? Who the fuck knows? And who fucking cares?
Dickfacehead allows a man to come and cut her hair because said man is a hairdresser and therefore gay. There has never been a hetero
sexual male hairdresser in the history of forever. Same goes for florists. And ballet dancers.
Oh, and Dickfacehead has a filing cabinet full of information about his ex-girlfriends. He also has a file on Ana, including a copy of her birth certificate, her social security number and her employment records.
So.
Yeah.
She says it’s not fair that he knows all these things about her when she doesn’t even know how much money he makes and doesn’t need to know.
And then he says this;
“I know. That’s one of the things I love about you.”
AND OH MY GOD HE FUCKING LOVES ME HE SAID HE LOVES ME YOU GUYS.
Totally no longer matters that he’s a whackjob with more issues than National Geographic. No sirree. The fact that he’s controlling, intrusive, a stalker, a kidnapper, arguably a rapist and above all a real fucking asshole all pale into insignificance.
Because he said the L word.
Urgh. Onwards.
Then she makes him an omelette and they talk about absolutely nothing for a bit. Ana goes to pick out one of the $3000 evening dresses because now that they’re in love she can accept his expensive gifts. And also it doesn’t matter that he has a dossier on her. Totally not a gold-digger though.