Guardian Review

It's probably safe to assume that everyone, even the Dalai Lama, knows what the world's fastest-selling book - 33m copies in 19 weeks - is about, so let's concentrate on the advantages of getting it on audio. Crypto-BDSM (bondage discipline sadism masochism) devotees will, I suspect, prefer to do it themselves without the intrusion of a reader. More so if they're blokes doing it to blokes, because the narrator is Anastasia Steele, a beautiful, susceptible, spankable 22-year-old American college student. Just in case you've been researching dwindling penguin numbers in Antarctica all year, I'd better explain that the Grey in the title refers to young, impossibly handsome, mega-rich Christian Grey, whose inner demons (with which he is constantly wrestling but we haven't time to go into that now) can only be appeased by practising BDS on good-looking masochistic girls. Ana is ideal because she works part-time in a hardware shop to pay her tuition fees, so he can pick up most of the necessary gear - rope, straps, handcuffs, whips - on their first date. It should be erotic but Christian is so damned polite: "Now Ana, if you could please just put on this airline eye mask and then place your left foot through this cuff attached to the iron ring behind your right ear . . ." It sounds more like flat-pack assembly instructions until "Holy shit!" shrieks Ana, writhing in ecstasy. "Holy fuck! I detonate around him again and again, round and round, as my orgasm rips me apart, scorching through me like a wildfire consuming everything, my body pulsating and shaking . . ." As will yours, I guarantee, listening to Ms Battoe's bottomless coffer of stifled gasps, ullulating, moans, strangled shrieks, panting sobs, and so on. Pasta needs sauce, and boring, bog-standard BDSM definitely needs a ton of audible ketchup to make it go down. - Sue Arnold It's probably safe to assume that everyone, even the Dalai Lama, knows what the world's fastest-selling book - 33m copies in 19 weeks - is about, so let's concentrate on the advantages of getting it on audio. Crypto-BDSM (bondage discipline sadism masochism) devotees will, I suspect, prefer to do it themselves without the intrusion of a reader. More so if they're blokes doing it to blokes, because the narrator is Anastasia Steele, a beautiful, susceptible, spankable 22-year-old American college student. - Sue Arnold.