Fifty Shades of Grey

In my opinion Cornwell's a pretty good and competent writer.

Lustig Andrei wrote:

In my opinion Cornwell's a pretty good and competent writer.

Which was pretty much Set's comment.
Many authors within the romance genre are good and competent writers. Historical fiction is just the men's variant.

I was just agreeing with Set.

People who like to trace all new trends back to new technology have offered this explanation – that women who wouldn't be seen dead reading smut on the tube could read it on their Kindle, and this launched a whole world of sales.

As history is written by the victors, so S&M is written by the Ss, and the problem with sadists is that they exaggerate. They're not looking at it from the masochist's point of view – it's in their job description not to. If the Marquis de Sade thinks any garden– variety submissive is going to get a kick out of having their back broken on a cartwheel, he's dreaming. Conversely, two opposite predilections, across a very broad scope, might easily collide in a fantasy written from the perspective of the masochist or naïf. So that's the popularity of volume one.

I think this book might be a game changer for the mega-million dollar romance novel sector.

it all started with Jane Austin

I think Romance is already pretty mainstream, women (and maybe men) just don't admit to reading it.

No, no, contrex, Jane Austin was the mother of Stephen Austin, the man who started the Anglo settlement of Texas when it was still part of Mexico.

Helen Memel is an outspoken eighteen-year-old, whose childlike stubbornness is offset by a precocious sexual confidence. She begins her story from a hospital bed, where she’s slowly recovering from an operation and lamenting her parents’ divorce. To distract herself, Helen ruminates on her past sexual adventures in increasingly uncomfortable detail, taking the reader on a sensational journey through Helen’s body and mind. Punky alienated teenager, young woman reclaiming her body from the tyranny of repressive hygiene (women mustn’t smell, excrete, desire), bratty smartass, vulnerable, lonely daughter, shock merchant, and pleasure seeker—Helen is all of these things and more, and her frequent attempts to assert her maturity ultimately prove just how fragile, confused, and young she truly is.
As Helen constantly blurs the line between celebration, provocation, and dysfunction in her relationship with her body, Roche exposes the double bind of female sexuality, delivering a compulsively readable and fearlessly intimate manifesto on sex, hygiene, and the repercussions of family trauma.