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I was at a friend’s hen night in London a couple of weeks ago. We were a group of women from mid-forties to early fifties — yes, a typical ‘desperate housewives’ gang having a night out. Dominating the conversation that evening was an erotic novel, Fifty Shades of Grey, the first instalment in a trilogy by British author E.L. James. The woman soon to marry had received two sets of the trilogy that night as presents, and she was told to take the books on her honeymoon! According to one of the ladies, the books are utterly addictive!

Well my last addiction, as far as books are concerned, was the Millennium trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). Though the books were massively popular, they didn’t outsell Harry Potter. However, Fifty Shades of Grey is now the fastest-selling paperback on record, even beating Harry Potter and Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code! It has topped best-seller lists in the US, the UK and around the world.

While I was in London, I noticed that on buses and tubes many women were reading the novels openly without the slightest sense of embarrassment, despite the books’ being dubbed ‘mummy porn’.

I was fascinated by the reviews and the general reaction to the books (it’s almost a cult!), so I decided I should definitely read them. I walked into a high street bookshop to search for the books. I thought they would be hidden somewhere in the corner, but instead I found them piled high with the other popular fiction novels in the centre of the shop! I bought the entire trilogy: Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed.  I shall start reading the first instalment as soon as I finish writing this.

The books were written by an English mother of two, Erika Mitchell, who is 49 and uses the pen name E.L. James. She initially posted the tales on her website as fan fiction based on the Twilight book series. She describes her own books as ‘romantic fantasy’ stories. According to some commentators, frustrated middle-aged mothers have driven the success of the racy books. Well, I will give you my own verdict once I have read all of them!