new-moon

Stay away from this post if you like this series, if you dislike snark, or if you don’t want to be spoiled about this book. You’ve been warned.

Somehow, despite my love of both vampires and romance, I was immune to the pull of the Twilight saga. But when I gave a paper on the Sookie Stackhouse series at my university in April, I noticed many of the attendees were women whose teenaged daughters had read the Twilight books. I got into a long conversation with an English professor whose 13 year old daughter devoured them, and she told me I just had to give them a try, not because she liked them, but because she wanted to know what I thought. Then I gave the Sookie paper at the Pop Culture Association conference in New Orleans, and I was shocked at the number of Twilight papers. Like my English professor colleague, many of the presenters distanced their own aesthetic taste from the text, some to the point of mocking it — they wanted to make it really clear that they had a merely academic interest; they were not fans. In my neighborhood, the books have been making the rounds of moms. They are usually in their 30s or 40s, white, heterosexual, middle class, and can’t blame it on their kids, who are too young for these books. They say, sheepishly, mystified, laughing at themselves, “I don’t know what it is. I just could not put them down.” This group’s taste generally runs to “book club fiction”, certainly not YA , romance, or paranormal. That was it. I decided I had to experience some of this phenomenon for myself.

I watched the movie Twilight this summer with my 15 year old niece and her 44 year old mother, when I got to see the mom/teen girl bonding over Twilight in action. They had read all the books, as well as some internet-leaked version of events from Edward’s POV, and their delight was catching. I enjoyed the movie, which harked back to the earnestness of movies of my teenage years, like The Lost Boys, Reckless (Aidan Quinn’s first movie), Footloose, Sixteen Candles. What Twilight has in common with those movies is that it takes the drama and pathos of the teen experience seriously. It’s not distanced or ironic. I also liked the Forks setting.

When I had a long car ride the other day, I decided to get the audio book of New Moon, to really experience Meyer’s writing for myself. After about three hours of Bella, I wanted to … well, have you ever seen that bit in Annie Hall, when Christopher Walken tells Woody Allen about his urges while driving? Specifically, the urge to turn the wheel into the oncoming headlights of another car? Then you have some idea of how I felt listening to Bella think about Edward ad nauseum. At first I thought, well, she’s young, her boyfriend is her whole world, weren’t we all like this once? Eventually, I had to pull over and breathe into a paper bag. That was enough of New Moon on audio for me.

Still, the story had sucked me in. I wanted to know what would happen. So I Kindled the book when I got home and finished it this weekend. Here are some random thoughts:

There is an appeal, I get it, kind of. The story is interesting, although the pace careened wildly, and the return of the Cullens felt tacked on rather than resolutionary (I made up that word). The writing I found adequate to piss poor. Here’s an example, the last line in the book, of the latter: “I squared my shoulders and walked forward to meet my fate, with my destiny solidly at my side.” Anyone with even a working knowledge of the English language should know that line makes no sense. I felt about 1/3 of this incredibly repetitive book could have been excised, with much better results. Rarely have I had the urge to throw my Kindle across the room, but at the 1000th mention of “the huge hole that had been punched through Bella’s chest” at losing Edward, suddenly $350 didn’t seem like too high a price to pay to make it stop. Wasn’t there any other non torso-related way Meyer could think of to communicate Bella’s distress?

Bella. Sigh. I totally understand why so many women have been a tad concerned at the way their daughters have embraced this character, although maybe they don’t. There are no “Team Bella” t-shirts, perhaps because it would be like embracing carbon monoxide, colorless, odorless, tasteless and highly toxic. To call her a “heroine” is an insult to the word. There is nothing to Bella besides her love for her boyfriend. I was prepared for teenage obsession — it exists, I get it (John Cusack with the boom box, anyone?). But Bella never thinks about anyone or anything else, ever. She’s either thinking about Edward or thinking about trying not to think about Edward. We don’t even get relief when she falls asleep, because she dreams about Edward every night (too bad she didn’t have access to propofol like Michael Jackson did. General anesthesia would have helped provide relief to both her and her poor readers.). It’s a kind of obsession I couldn’t believe until I read it. But unlike other literary protagonists with similar obsessions, Bella’s love for Edward is superficial and one note, and thus a very hard thing to hang such a long book on. It’s the hearts and puppies kind of love. “Love you forever. Ditto.” is all the complexity and nuance you get here.

She’s melodramatic, narcissistic, not very bright, and wholly dull. After chapter after chapter of Bella as a nearly catatonic empty shell, I kept fervently wishing her quasi-suicidal outings would actually succeed. But no, Bella is too witless to even get herself killed.

And what makes Edward such a catch? It’s never clear, because we see him through Bella’s unimaginative eyes (New Moon is written in the first person). We know he is “beautiful” and “perfect”, with a hard cold body, and that he’s in love with Bella. What does he do in his spare time, or does he even have any, considering what a time suck serving as the glue of Bella’s fragile identity must be? It’s like a perfect circle of narcissism.

I also thought this teen world was unbelievably, jarringly, clean. Bella actually chastises Jake for using profanity, and Edward actually chastises Bella for ordering a Coke. There’s no sex, no alcohol, no drugs — not even the occasional joint. Forks is definitely not like any American town I know of. Does this have something to do with Meyer’s religious beliefs? I am out of the loop, but recall hearing that at PCA.

I probably enjoyed Jacob the most — this character actually has an arc, unlike Bella and Edward who are mindnumbingly unchanged from page one to page last  –  but I wouldn’t root for Bella and Jacob, because I liked him too much. I was interested in the whole wolf storyline in general. I would love to read a romance based around Sam and Emily’s relationship, actually. In paranormal, we so often have the fear of the supernatural hero accidentally hurting the human heroine, but he never actually does. How would it go if he disfigured her face (or reverse the roles, and she did it to him?). Now that’s a story I’d love to read.

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