"Fifty Shames of Earl Grey" by Fanny Merkin

BOOK TITLE: Fifty Shames of Earl Grey

AUTHOR: Andrew Shaffer (writing as Fanny Merkin)

YEAR: 2012

GENRE: Fiction

SUBGENRE: Erotica Parody

GRADE: Pass

In a blatant satire of EL James’s Fifty Shades trilogy, clueless college student and Wal-Mart employee Anna Steal takes on her roommate’s journalism assignment and interviews Earl Grey, a seductive billionaire with odd sexual appetites. The two of them get romantically involved when Earl stalks Anna everywhere she goes and convinces her to join in on his shameful endeavors. He is particularly fond of BDSM (Bards, Dragons, Sorcery, and Magick), a role-playing game for the bedroom. Can Anna accept Earl for who he is and…okay, that’s enough. This is some ridiculous stuff right here.

Anybody who had the misfortune of reading the Fifty Shades books can appreciate how accurate of a parody this is. Instead of biting her lips, Anna Steal picks her nose. Instead of just ropes and duct tape, Earl Grey also buys a hacksaw from Wal-Mart, which makes Anna believe he’s the second coming of Dexter. The awful descriptions from the original are exaggerated to the extreme in this parody. Hell, instead of an “inner goddess”, Anna has an “inner guidette”, which was no doubt taken from her roommate’s binge watching of corny reality shows like The Jersey Shore. Everything, and I do mean everything, about this book is so out of whack that it’ll make you laugh from page to page. If Weird Al Yankovich wrote erotica, it would be in the form of Fifty Shames of Earl Grey.

Speaking of ridiculousness, it’s common knowledge by now that Fifty Shades of Grey is Twilight fan fiction. The author hammed up those Twilight references all throughout the book. Earl Grey is the perfect caricature of Edward Cullen with how “wicked” his smile is, how “beautiful and sparkly” he is, and how he’s perfect in every way both physically and financially, which is why he buys businesses left and right just for the sake of stalking Anna. Earl even has a fierce rival in Anna’s friend Jin, a Brony who could be a stand-in for Jacob Black due to how muscle-bound he looks in his tight clothing. Anna Steal is also a stand-in for Bella Swan due to how ditzy and plain she really is. I haven’t read the Twilight books, but I know enough about them to see the references from a mile away. I laughed my head off at them just the same.

As someone who lost a cat to lung cancer around the time I read this, I needed the laughs. It’s a reminder not to take life too seriously and that it’s good to unplug every now and then. Sure, I’ll always have books that became my favorites because of how they ripped my heart to shreds. If that’s the case, then Fifty Shames of Earl Grey was the glue that pieced it together again. Thank you, Fanny Merkin, for all the laughs you gave me. You deserve a passing grade!