Stephenie Meyer, Twilight (Little, Brown and Company, 2005) and
New Moon (Little, Brown and Company, 2006)
After finishing the first two instalments of Stephenie Meyer's fabulously popular Twilight series, I have decided to give them a good review. It would be all too easy to pan them both, for the sometimes clunky prose and the repetitive melodrama
of the relationship between Bella Swan and Edward Cullen (living and undead, respectively). But that would be unfair; and if I was really concerned with such things I wouldn't have touched the series.
In fact, I devoured both books over the course of just a few days, and was, I'm ashamed to admit, just as enthralled with the teen romance as your typical pubescent girl. Bella and Edward are best compared to Romeo and Juliet in the immediacy and hyperbolic intensity of their mutual regard. While Bella spends much of her time wallowing in insecurity and comparing herself unfavourably to her chaste lover, Edward remains as faithful as a labrador retriever. Perhaps the series' biggest strength is Edward himself - even I got a crush on him. He contains within himself the recipe for a teenage girl's dream boyfriend: beautiful and devoted in equally impossible measure, thus assuaging any lingering insecurities; lusty yet gentlemanly. These amiable qualities outshine his disturbing traits: overprotectiveness, a penchant for stalking, melancholia, and unpredictable mood swings. (And I'm not counting the vampire-y things.)
What most fascinated me about the story was how well-suited it was to Meyer's vampire trope. Other than Bram Stoker's Dracula I have never read anything in the ever-popular vampire genre, and I couldn't really see the attraction. But it certainly works in Twilight, a romance novel with no sex (so far). Meyer is a Mormon, so she may have a vested interest in striking a delicate balance between keeping things clean and creating a convincing romance for her hormonal readers. Edward's vampire status allows her to do this. Bella and Edward are perpetually hot and bothered; not only does Edward also crave the taste of her blood, but as a vampire he is designed to attract Bella as well. Unfortunately, Edward cannot allow himself to "lose control" sexually because - and I realize how ridiculous this sounds - he might kill her. (Ah, sex and death.) All these intricacies can, of course, stand in for everyday adolescent shenanigans in the real world: hot-blooded girls and boys furiously making out but struggling to restrain themselves because they're afraid of pregnancy, disease, ridicule, shame, regret, and on and on. This must have been Meyer's intention. She makes it clear that Edward's unusual makeup (and advanced age) does not hamper his desire. (One of his funniest remarks goes something like, "I may be a vampire, Bella, but I'm still a man." Yes!)
So, if we're going to get any satisfaction from these two, either Bella has to become a vampire or Edward has to become human. And then they have to get married. Good thing real life isn't so complicated.
I'm afraid I am one of those that find this book all too easy to pan. It was a struggle to finish, much like Bella's struggle not give her womanly virtue away to Edward, and his not to mate and then likely kill her. If I were a teen or pre-teen then perhaps I could overook the terrible writing and melodrama, but I'm not. Now, I should have known, based on all the fuss out there in the media, what I was getting into. But no, like a lemming, I jumped the cliff. The only reason I finished it was because there was an appeal to disliking it. A perverse joy in delighting in it's awfulness. Now, it's not the vampire idea that turns me off. I totally enjoy the campy delights of HBO's True Blood tv series,but perhaps because it is a more adult representation of the messy interaction between humans and vampires, with all the blood (and sex) you would expect of a myth that explores the feeding of one off of another. To me, ultimately this book, and the series in total, is a means for the author to write a series in which the romantic characters put off sex until marriage, an idea that conforms with her religious beliefs, with the message cleverly packaged in the vampire tale. Risque without actually being risque. And while I can acknowledge the cleverness of the total concept, I found it a very poor read. Sorry, I feel mean writing it, but its' how I feel about the book.
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