Twilight

I finished it. I have to say, I’m a little disappointed. Disappointed because it wasn’t actually that bad. Don’t get me wrong, it’s all kinds of rubbish, the writing is terrible, the characters often dull and not at all fully fleshed out (does Rosalie even speak once?), but it’s not as dreadful as I was expecting. I thought there would be much more unintentionally humorous things, much more for me to poke fun at and mock. But all in all my main reaction is ‘meh’. Because it’s not so terrible I feel like writing a thousand words on why it should be burned, but neither is it so good I feel the need to gush about it. It’s actually not that much worse than the Point Horror books I read as a teen (though not anywhere near as good as Christopher Pike), so I can understand why it’s being read, I just can’t for the life of me understand why it’s been such a huge hit.

For anyone who has been under a rock for the past year and has missed out on the book and the movie and the hysteria, Twilight is about a young girl, Bella, who moves to Forks, a small Pacific Northwest town, to live with her estranged father while her mother follows her boyfriend (husband?) across the country while he tries to become a baseball star. Great role model you got there Bella. And there she meets Edward, beautiful, stunning, mesmerising (you get the idea) Edward, who happens to be a vampire. And they fall in love. Allegedly passionate all-consuming (read: unhealthy) love. Edward doesn’t prey on humans, and neither do his family, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want to, and so Bella is basically one step away from death the whole time. And she’s pretty fine with it, as long as she gets to be near Edward. Being away from Edward is a fate worse than death after all.

What I’ve heard from so many people is that they just couldn’t put it down, even if they thought the writing was terrible and trashy, they still had to read it. I didn’t get that. The first two thirds of this book were a chore to read. I had to force myself to pick it up again. Because nothing happens for an age. And you have to listen to Bella, possibly the most boring narrator in the history of literature (and I’ve read The Remains of the Day for goodness sake!), going on and on about boring things, written in a style that makes you think putting a nail gun to your head would be a better way to spend your day:

“When I got home I unloaded all the groceries…I wrapped potatoes in foil and stuck them in the oven to bake. When I was finished with that I took my bag upstairs. Before starting my homework, I changed into a pair of dry sweats, pulled my damp hair into a ponytail, and checked my email.”

Is anyone still awake? And it goes on and on like that for hundreds of pages. It finally picks up in the last third, although even her discovery of his being a vampire is dull. She’s so damn calm about it, she doesn’t ask any questions, she just accepts it and continues with her boring life. I mean, come on, you’re fine with this, like he just told you he has a bad skin condition or something? You don’t ask immediately how old he is, has he ever killed anyone, or why in god’s name he’s in high school? Oh of course not, because she lurves him. Already, when they’ve had all of two conversations.

I go on and on here, not all of it makes sense I’m sure…

This is supposed to be an epic love, and yet that too bored me. I don’t know what they see in each other. Edward is attracted to her on an animal level, because of her scent, not really because of who she is. Which is a good thing probably seeing as she’s about as interesting as a plank of wood. (Don’t get me started on the three other boys who asked her out, in the words of a very wise man, What is it with this chick? She have beer-flavored nipples?). And all Bella seems to care about is how perfect and handsome he is, there’s very little about his actual personality. There’s a rule in writing: show, don’t tell. But all Meyer does is tell. She tells us all the time how amazing Edward is, and charming and perfect and blah blah blah. But I never see it, nothing he does here comes close to making it clear to me. Plus, the age thing. He’s 100+ years old, and she’s 17, so that’s kinda icky. I have to let this slide a bit because I let it slide with Buffy and Angel. But that was Buffy. She’s the Buffess of Buffonia. I get why Angel loved her. Bella…is not Buffy. I am lost as to why there is an attraction.

Oh, and Edward kind of pissed me off in the beginning when he said he couldn’t be around her, he was too dangerous. Then about a paragraph later her comes back and says he’ll go to Seattle with her. Because he’s warned her, so if anything does happen, it’s not his fault, it’s all on her. Argh. That seriously did my head in. And it does worry me a bit that young girls across the globe might be reading it and thinking this is how relationships are supposed to be, and that if a boy isn’t climbing in your window at night to watch you sleep, there must be something wrong with him. Edward’s love is quite stifling really, he knows best, he’s possessive and restrictive, and yet he’s always the hero, because Bella is so damn inept at life that she’s constantly getting into trouble and being in need of rescue. My inner feminist balks a little at this.

I won’t go on and on about the terrible writing, because it’s been done to death I should imagine, but there are so many things that just seem to be done out of convenience, it’s lazy. An example is Jacob Black. When I had heard him mentioned before I read it I pictured this big guy, maybe early twenties, and then you find out he’s younger than Bella and kind of meek and little. But, oh wait, by the end he has grown to over six feet tall. Phew, he can be an excellent addition to Bella’s romantic life in the second book, no? Gah. And the fact that the vampires are in high school. There’s this half-assed explanation that the younger they pretend to be, the longer they can stay in one place without attracting attention. OK, but why bother going to school, just say you dropped out. Is this what they spend their eternities doing, moving around from place to place, school to school? Who would want to be a vampire if you had to keep going back to high school? It’s not very sexy is it?

You know what else isn’t sexy? A vampire who sparkles. I can understand wanting to do something original when it comes to vampire lore, but sparkles? Really? He might as well be drinking pixie dust instead of blood. Vampires are supposed to be sexy, dark and brooding, not laughable. And my god the bit where he goes in the sun for the first time:

“His skin…literally sparkled, like thousands of tiny diamonds were embedded on the surface. He lay perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted, incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare. His glistening, pale lavender lids were shut, though of course he didn’t sleep. A perfect statue, carved in some unknown stone, smooth like marble, glittering like crystal.”

Someone got a thesaurus for Christmas, didn’t they?

But ok, he sparkles in the sun…but only direct sunlight? That’s taking a bit of a chance that he won’t be out on an overcast day and it won’t suddenly brighten up and turn him into a disco ball in the middle of the school. So yeah, convenient.

So…the good bits? Like I said, it picked up towards the end, when the other vampires showed up and stuff actually happened. I liked that we got to see a bit more of the Cullens, and learn about their history, and this vampire lore. It took way too long to get there though. There didn’t need to be so much of them sitting in science class feeling all awkward around each other. The Cullens are kind of wasted much of the time, which is a shame. I feel like they could actually have personalities if they were given half a chance.

Will I be reading the rest of the series? I’m not sure yet, maybe, which is better than when I started. Mainly because I know how the story ends, and if that doesn’t deserve to be mocked mercilessly, then I don’t know what does.