Review: I snorted with laughter the whole way through
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 24, 2012
I class myself as a Royalist. I joined the celebrations in Hyde Park on the day Prince William married Kate Middleton. I have a collection of Charles & Diana coffee mugs. Whatever the failings of individual royals, I think the Royal Family is one of the few remaining Great things about Great Britain.And yet I snorted with laughter all the way through Fifty Shades of a Princess. It's a very well-observed and sharply written comedy, which not long ago would have seen its author locked up in the Tower of London. How times have changed, that such a scabrous, obscene and indeed treasonous book can now be published with absolute impunity. Are we are better, more freer society for allowing such publications? I'm not sure, but it's a very, very funny book.Any reader of Private Eye will find the tone of voice familiar. Fifty Shades of a Princess has a very public schoolboy humour, that finds anything to do with sex and toilets hilariously funny. There is lots of talk of bums and botties, and a terror of female sexuality.I thought at first that Ann Abrams must be a woman-hating anti-feminist, but actually I think repressed public schoolboy is more likely. The two are often the same thing. There's a delightful level of detail behind the humour. I loved the imaginary names of upper class socialites such as Hepzibah Capshett. Abrams certainly knows the Royal story very well, for instance referring to Kate's famous dress worn at a St Andrews fashion show, and the satire extends to the wider circle in which the young royals and their suitors move.The English are obsessed with class, with so many gradations of snobbery as each class looks down on all the others. I actually found these parts of the story more keenly observed and funnier than the sex scenes. Some readers may be put off by Abram's lavatorial obsessions. You could even say this book is another assault on the dignity of the Royal marriage, just like the French paparazzi. But at least it's funny, and it's satire, and no real princesses were harmed in the making of this book.Sadly the Kindle dictionary didn't tell me the meaning of "sausage & mash" or "Full English". I do hope we'll find out in the next installment.