May 292012
 

Ana’s internal exclamations of “Crap!” are becoming tiresome. She doesn’t even swear like an adult.

After the photo shoot (and why does Ana have to be present for that?), Christian asks her out for coffee. Maybe I’m paranoid, but Christian’s actions still seem a little suspicious. For example, he makes a point of separating Ana from her friends and being alone with her, instead of, say, meeting with all of them for a little post-session lunch.

Money changes things, particularly when one person in a relationship has a lot of it and the other has a lot less. A woman I know once told me about working as an interior designer, which involved lunch and dinner meetings with the men who owned deluxe offices and mansions. When you’re a woman having dinner with a guy who thinks nothing of $600 dinner-and-drinks bill, there’s a tension in the air, and sometimes there are… expectations.

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May 292012
 

Chapter 2 goes into some exposition on Anastasia’s background, such as her field of study, English Lit. She’s doing a paper on Tess of the D’Urbervilles (I guess Wuthering Heights would have been too on-point). It also introduces Jose, Ana’s platonic friend, and I believe he’s supposed to be the Jacob analog in this parallel universe.

The sibling-like relationship between Ana and Jose is another reiteration of the theme of Ana’s (figurative and perhaps literal) virginity. Again, it’s so strongly emphasized that it becomes a little suspect.
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May 262012
 

It’s generally a bad sign when a book written in a female character’s first-person POV opens with her looking at herself in a mirror. In short order, I knew more about how Anastasia Steele looked and dressed than anything else about her. To be fair, this may be attributed to EL James’ background in television, in which visuals, dialogue and action tell the story, instead of introspection or exposition.
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