TITLE: THE SECRET LIFE OF E.L. JAMES
AUTHOR: Marc Shapiro
Pages: 176
Date: 14/01/2013
Grade: 3.5
Details: Non Fiction
Received from Riverdale Avenue Books
Through NetGalley
Own
“You know erotica has truly
arrived when you can buy Fifty Shades of grey and creamed corn in the same
place.”
I am not entirely sure what to say about the content of this book, so I
will start with a copy of the blurb:
“Discover the secrets
behind the Red Room of Pain. The intricacies of making love in the backseat of
an expensive sports car. The rough and tumble process of editing Fifty Shades
of Grey. Find out where the name E.L. James really comes from. And finally the
step by step process by which this middle-aged British mother of two came up
with the international best-selling erotic romance series that has sold more
copies than Harry Potter.
NY Times best-selling
biographer Marc Shapiro uncovers the inspiration and secrets behind this
writing sensation, explaining how she did it with exclusive interviews with her
editors and early fans. Marc Shapiro is the NY Times best-selling author of
J.K. Rowling: The Wizard Behind Harry Potter, Justin Bieber: The Fever! and
many other best-selling celebrity biographies. He has been a free-lance
entertainment journalist for more than twenty-five years, covering film,
television, and music for a number of national and international newspapers and
magazines.”
Sounds interesting,
doesn’t it? Except that it wasn’t, not really. To be honest, I do understand
that it can’t be easy to write an un-authorized biography these days. With all
sorts of information about virtually everybody freely available on the internet
and the books' subject not participating in the work, it must be all but
impossible to come up with information that isn’t already widely available in
the public arena. And writing a book about a phenomenon like E.L. James and her
trilogy only makes that problem bigger. The lady and her books have been
written and talked about by anybody and everybody; from professional reviewers and
journalists to fellow authors and enthusiastic amateurs like me. So my first
observation about this book is that it didn’t contain anything that was new or
surprising to me and it would astonish me if anybody else interested in this
author were to find anything they didn’t already know in this book.
My second observation is
that the blurb makes this book sound a bit more exciting than it actually is.
For example, if you’re hoping to discover something tittalating about that “red
room of pain” you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Yes, the room
gets mentioned, but not in the way you might imagine or hope.
And then there are the
mistakes. I came across two bits of information that I know for sure were
wrong. Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight books are a quartet and not a trilogy as stated in this work. And “Need” by Sherri Hayes is
not her second book, although it is the second title in her wonderful “Finding
Anna” series. The worry of course is that if I can pick up on two mistakes this
easily, there could well be a lot more misinformation here that I haven’t
picked up on. I don’t know and am willing to give Mr. Shapiro the benefit of
the doubt but I would say: reader beware.
And finally I want to
point out one inconsistency that annoyed me. In the first part of the book,
when Marc Shapiro writes about the days when James first started writing her
story, he states that she wrote for her personal pleasure with no thoughts of
getting published, never mind fame and fortune. By the time he gets to the end
of the book though, he is suddenly telling us what a clever business woman she
is and that she had been planning her marketing strategy from a very early
stage. Obviously it can only be one or the other, and this book doesn’t tell us
which one it is.
So, after all those
complaints, why did I still rate this book 3.5 stars? First and foremost
because it was an easy and smooth read. I flew through the pages and enjoyed
some of the quotes I ran across:
I liked the answer James’ husband gave when asked what it was like being
married to an author of erotic fiction: “Mostly
it’s just like being married”
And the following two from James herself:
"There are a lot of ways to
describe an orgasm. But at a certain point I ran out of ways."
"I think first person point
of view is much easier to write than third person point of view. So naturally I
took the easy way out."
I also think this might be a nice little book for anyone who wants to
have all their information on E.L. James together in one place. Marc Shapiro
has taken all the bits and pieces available in the media and arranged them in a
very accessible way, saving fans the trouble of having to do the work
themselves. And with James having many millions of enthusiastic fans I am sure
there is a good market for this book.
I also liked the extra information available after the actual biography
has concluded: discographies, of the
classical albums as well as the list as blogged by James, a history of erotic
fiction and a piece on Cinema Erotic.
This is a nice little book about an interesting author provided you’re
not hoping to discover anything you didn’t already know.
