c) its mildly nauseating mix of irritating whimsy and mawkish sentimentality.
This is what I recall. Particularly whimsy. It starts with those titles and by a page 50 that overbearing, enforced quaintness has you locked in the cellar with a sticky cake knife at your throat and forced to wear a suit made entirely out of sticky doilies. And there's sugar in my tea.
I didn't actually know it was a
famously bad book. Anyway, if anyone is in Shepherd's Bush, there's a copy behind the hedge of the house at the end of Frith St. I doubt even the mildew has managed to finish it.
The EL James phenomenon had passed me by, other than the disconcerting experience of once sitting next to an oldster on a plane, and glancing over at his Kindle and seeing a passage rendered there in the largest font size supported, which meant my nosiness was rewarded with the following few, almost billboard scale, words:
her hand tightened around his erection. Now, I'll be honest, my idea of fun isn't spending several hours sharing a confined space with a potentially aroused geriatric. Still, my attention was snared. It didn't get any better. A lady apparently
detonated a few pages further on. Presumably to escape. It was only afterwards, when describing it to a friend, she pointed out that it was
that book.