Previously: Ana broke up with Grey after he hit her really, really hard. Then he ate pretzels.
—
Alex: Yes, it’s true. Ana and Grey broke up, but this book is still going. Can you guess how happy I am about that?
But E. L. must have a really good reason for writing FIVE MORE CHAPTERS of this damn thing, right? I’m sure there are going to be all sorts of plot twists and turns, and plenty of brand new information which will make reading what follows a totally worthwhile use of our time. Right? RIGHT?
Marines:
Alex: Let’s find out!
The chapter opens and for once Grey isn’t waking up, because he can’t sleep. He lies awake sniffing his sheets, which still smell of Ana, ‘and for a moment I contemplate death by suffocation’.
I’m sorry to interrupt my own recap so soon, but I just have to point out that Ana and Christian first met less than a month ago. The dated ‘chapter’ headings in this book make this even more apparent. It was twenty-seven days ago that Ana first showed up to interview Grey in his office, and that wasn’t even their first date. In fact, Ana and Christian can only be said to have been ‘dating’ for three weeks at this point. I know Mari and Sweeney already talked about this a lot last time around, but what with all the extreme melodrama in this chapter I thought it was worth mentioning again. (M: It was. This is ridiculous.)
Dick de Grey seems to agree with me (yeah, I’m bringing back that game for a second) and chimes in: ‘Get a grip, Grey’. (J: Even his dick is over this melodrama.) Grey lies awake and broods a little more, before falling into one of his nightmare flashbacks.
In this dream, Grey’s mother is passed out on the couch until her abuser shows up and starts beating her with a belt. As he hits her he shouts ‘You are one fucked-up bitch’ over and over. Are you getting the significance of this flashback yet? It’s very subtle, so you might have missed it.
Mari: I may have missed it because I’m “reading” this chapter by taking flying leaps over paragraphs of text. Is it the end yet?
Alex: Only four more chapters to go!
Baby Grey runs over and tries to make him stop, but gets a smack in the face. This makes his mum yell ‘No!’, but the beating continues until she’s silent.
If I had to pick one thing I hate most about Christian Grey… well, that would be an impossible task, and I’d probably have a meltdown just from trying. However, somewhere up there near the top would be ‘his attitude towards his birth mother’. This bothered me in the first books, but it is just made SO much worse in this one. We already saw how he feels nothing but contempt for her, to the point that (spoilers? oh, who cares) he actually seeks out women who look like her so that he can exact some kind of twisted revenge. And yet, in all the flashbacks we’ve seen in this book, there’s nothing which really seems to explain that level of utter hatred. They paint a picture of a young, abused, drug-addicted woman who tried and failed to protect her son from her own abuser. I know that occasionally baking pies and singing to him doesn’t mean that she wasn’t horribly neglectful at other times, and I can certainly understand Grey feeling some confusion and resentment towards her. But does she really deserve to be referred to only ever as ‘the crack whore’, and to be given these kind of beatings-by-proxy?
Mari: It would be strange for Grey to supposedly feel all this anger toward her, but only ever dream of her in a positive light, or a least in a light where we don’t see her doing anything to Grey directly. It all gets the more icky when you consider how these dreams and this “crack whore” character is used by the author to explain and excuse Grey. But it doesn’t explain him. And it especially doesn’t excuse him.
Alex: Nope.
Anyway, Grey wakes up from his nightmare and, just in case we didn’t get it before, helpfully recalls Ana calling him ‘one fucked-up son of a bitch’ the previous morning. You know, right after he beat her with a belt in the same way that his mother got beaten in his flashback. E. L, tell me again how this series is a celebration of healthy BDSM relationships?
Mari:
Everyone laugh until you cry!
Alex: I actually am laughing a little, because I almost put this very gif in here myself but then decided I’d already been a bit too gif-happy in this recap.
Grey laments not being able to help ‘the crack whore’ and tells himself that he was right to let Ana go. Then he heads to the piano…
…but after a paragraph break he’s suddenly back in his bed, waking up again. More sleepwalking, I guess? (J: The time really flies when there’s no one around to impress with the names of the composers you’re playing.) He was having a sex dream about Ana, which gave him an awkward boner, but that quickly disappears when he remembers that she’s gone. Oh! I almost forgot, For those who care (i.e. none of you) the last few scenes happened at 2am, 3:30 and 5:58.
Grey gets up and goes for an angry run and, after declaring that he needs to listen to something ‘violent’, he puts on ‘Pump It’ by the Black Eyed Peas. This made me laugh way more than it should. I guess E. L. James thinks the Black Eyed Peas are ‘violent’ in the same way that she thinks a bit of spanking is hardcore BDSM.
Grey decides to turn this run into a quick stalking trip, so he passes Ana’s new apartment. He starts off telling himself ‘I’m not desperate to see her – I just want to check that she’s okay’. But then, in a shocking turn of events, he actually admits that this is bullshit. See? I told you there’d be plot twists!
Jessica: We didn’t even have to wait for a new chapter for them to develop! Hell, we didn’t have to wait for a new page. It was literally, literally the next sentence, you guys.
Alex: He stares at her apartment for a while and then freaks out, imagining that maybe she went out and hooked up with a random guy last night.
‘It takes all my self-control not to go barging through the front door of her apartment to check that she’s there and on her own’.
We’re supposed to be impressed, I guess.
We cut suddenly from early morning to dusk, which sort of makes me feel like I’ve cheated at this recap. I’m definitely not going to argue, though. Grey has been working all day, plotting his takeover of Ana’s publishing company. ‘At least I’ll be able to keep an eye on Ana’, he thinks to himself. OK, it was bad enough that he was secretly buying the company when they were together. But now he’s still going through with it, with the express purpose of ‘keeping an eye on’ a woman who just broke off their three-week-old relationship. I know we’re nearly at the end of this mercifully-short chapter but I think I need booze before I can go any further.
Grey’s scheming is interrupted by a text from Elliot asking if he wants to go for a beer. Elliot, it’s like you read my mind. Grey says that he’s busy and Elliot replies with ‘Fuck you, then’. Wow, Elliot! This is getting spooky now. Then, in a hilariously melodramatic fashion, Grey thinks ‘Yeah. Fuck me’.
Jessica: At least this was all done by text, and not emails. Finally, at the very end of this book, they’re embracing modern technology. Sort of.
Alex: Grey heads to the kitchen, where Mrs Jones is making his dinner. She asks if he’ll be needing two portions and he just glares at her until she inexplicably apologises for disturbing him. Grey, I don’t care if you just got dumped. She’s making your fucking dinner. Stop being a dick.
The chapter ends with this:
‘Christ, even my staff have noticed that something’s rotten in the state of fucking Denmark’.
I don’t know why we’re bringing Hamlet into this all of a sudden, but I don’t care. The chapter’s over and we’re another step closer to finishing this damn thing once and for all!
Mari: I barely said anything in this recap at all! WEEEE!
Jessica: *looks up from empty beer glass. Eyes shift from side to side. Pours more beer.*
Alex: Cheers!
Trauma flashback: Fifty Shades of Grey finished with the events of the last chapter, and the next book didn’t pick up the story again until three days later, so we can only guess what Ana was doing during that time. However, Grey’s flashback in this chapter was in fact an expanded version of the prologue to Fifty Shades Darker.
Next time on Grey: Seriously, why is this book still happening on Monday, June 6, 2011.
I'm a thirty-year-old postgrad living in Scotland. When I'm not writing (which, between my degree and Snark Squad, is almost never) I watch entirely too much TV, and live in constant fear of the day that I run out of things to watch.
I'm a chronic book nerd and love storytelling in all forms. I'm particularly excited by the rise of the television show as an art form with long, cinematically beautiful plots and complex character arcs (I also watch cartoons). My travels in the past handful of years have led me through three continents and most recently landed me among the majestic mountains of Colorado. Some day I will compile all my travel journals/blogs into one place. Some day. Until then, you can find me with craft beer in hand, ready at any moment to deeply and passionately discuss survival tactics for the zombie apocalypse.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
