When I first heard the premise for Stephanie Meyer’s book, Twilight, I knew immediately that it wasn’t for me. Not too surprising since I’m not a teenage girl. In passing, I’d hear annoying things about the books—vampires that sparkle when exposed to sunlight instead of bursting into flames, Edward the vampire is actually over one hundred years old and that makes his relationship with the seventeen year old protagonist technically pedophilia, the writing is absolutely terrible, and so on—but I left it alone for the most part.
However, one of my FaceBook friends posted a link to a blog stating that the Twilight series encourages young girls to be totally dependent on men. One of my eyebrows rose. I don’t condone dependency in any fashion for anyone. I asked one of my seventeen year old sisters who had read the series and wanted to know what she thought about that idea. I didn’t get answers that satisfied me and my eyebrow rose further. I wanted to come back with specifics, but I hadn’t read the book.
This left me with no choices.
I had to read it.
All five hundred, god-awful pages of it.
This is my extremely biased review and your guide to hating all things Twilight.
Note
Before I start, please do me the favor of not pulling the “genitalia card.” I think we all know that I’m not female and that this book was not written with me in mind. I won’t suggest that this book is bad because I don’t care for the subject matter, so long as you don’t suggest that I don’t understand it because I’m just a dumb ole icky boy and that I have cooties. Deal? Deal.
A Biased Summary
Bella (the protagonist and narrator) moves from Phoenix to nowheresville to live with dad while mom and new boyfriend travel about pursuing new boyfriend’s minor league baseball career. Bella hates it, feels alone and dislikes being the new high school it-girl. She is pursued romantically by three male students for reasons that are not fully explained, but she shuns them all. Why they should pursue her at all is a mystery since she doesn’t seem to be good at anything, totally lacking anything close to charm, not particularly attractive and seems to have no positive qualities whatsoever (aside from, interestingly enough, her abilities in the kitchen).
Bella meets Edward Cullen, an antisocial Adonis who is simply and almost exclusively described as “perfect” and they get along poorly. Bella is nearly killed in a parking lot mishap but is saved by Edward who seems to appear out of nowhere. Bella is suspicious of how he did it and also suspicious of the hand-sized imprints in the hood of the van that would have killed her. He refuses to answer her questions and things remain chilly between them. Bella goes on a beach trip and meets local boy Jacob who clues her in to local tribal folklore about vampires and specifically about the Cullen family.
Edward saves her again, this time from possible rape in a nearby town she is visiting with friends (again, why Bella?). Edward swoops in to save her so promptly because he has been following her (or stalking her, whichever you prefer). From here, not surprisingly, their relationship quickly takes off. Soon enough, he confirms what Jacob told her about his being a vampire, but the good kind that feed on animals instead of humans. After this point, lots of mushy pillow talk ensues and they are, of course, in love. Edward admits to watching her as she sleeps, a point that Bella doesn’t mind, supposedly leaving the reader to be creeped out for her. Edward states that his initial interest spawned from how “irresistible” she smells and from the fact that he can’t read her mind (oh yeah, Edward can read minds). In other words, he likes her because he finds her smelly and can’t tell what, if anything, she’s thinking.
Bella meets the whole happy Cullen vampire family and they all go play a game of baseball (sounds bizarre, doesn’t it?). A traveling band of “bad” vampires (you know, the ones that feed on humans) comes upon them and they talk for a bit and wonder why they brought along a “snack,” a reference to Bella. They get Bella away from them safely but, due to Edward’s telepathy, he knows that the head vamp is a “hunter” and that he is following Bella as they speed away. A plan is concocted by Bella to elude the hunter, a plan that’s described as “brilliant” in the book but has all the slyness of a seven year old’s battle plan to assault a set of playground equipment that he is currently imagining as an enemy castle.
Her plan leads her and her good vampire entourage back to Phoenix and the hunter followers her there. The hunter calls her to say that he’s holding her mother hostage and to come alone if she doesn’t want him to yadda yadda yadda. In an unbelievable show of ineptitude on her part, she opts to run from her vampire protectors and let the hunter kill her to save Edward from harm…despite, you know, the fact that he’s immortal and nearly impossible to kill.
She confronts the hunter to find that the vamp used a home video of her mother saying “Bella! Bella!” to sell the ruse (this is the only remotely clever plot point in the whole damn book). The vamp gives a prolonged and tiresome speech that would make a Bond villain cringe before he decides to chow down. And, just when everything is darkest, she’s saved by Edward. Yet again. She sustained some serious injuries but will pull through just in time for the second book in the series, much to this blogger’s disappointment.
The Good
The truly surprising thing about this book was that there were actually some parts that I found somewhat entertaining. Eddie and Bella’s initial awkward banter rang true to me as did some of Bella’s friends. There were some fine descriptive paragraphs, namely the setup for the beach scene where Jacob is introduced and some of her walks in the forest. I should note that when I say “fine,” I mean it the same way that restaurant survey cards mean it: Bad—Poor—Fine—Good—Great. But we’re talking about, what, twenty pages tops that wasn’t filled with garbage? Now to move on to the rest of it.
Pass the Thesaurus, Please
The language is awkward and inconsistent. The prose (if you can even call it that) will roll along in a simple, “see dick run” kind of way for a while, until there’s a smattering of larger, “ten dollar” words. It’s bizarre. The vocabulary will barely rise above the multisyllabic and then you’re assaulted by the type of words that you’d see in the SAT’s. Now that’s an interesting thought, isn’t it? Wouldn’t that be a clever, if not shameless, marketing ploy? Here’s a book aimed at teenage girls that is not only a romance but is also filled with the kind of words that they’ll see come test time. “It’s a win-win situation, ladies! Romance and higher test scores all in one shebang! Get em while they’re hot!” I seriously doubt this is what’s going on—a writer would have to have a criminal lack of scruples to engineer a book around this ploy—but it’s just about the only way that I can explain what’s going on. In any case, I have no doubt that the Thesaurus was wide open on the second draft.
If you want a good idea of what it’s like reading this book, imagine someone with a deeply southern American accent trying to pull off a posh English accent and failing miserably.
“Fancy a spot’a tea, y’all?”
Yeah, that’s what reading this book is like.
Boring Characters
The problem that towers over all other problems that I have with this book is that at no point did I care—not even a bit—about Bella. Let me say that in a different way, if the protagonist/narrator had been hit by a bus, I would have been happy with this book being a cautionary tale about looking both ways before crossing the street. Bella is melancholy, depressed and not endearing in the slightest. She might be intelligent but it’s hard to tell since that never comes up, aside from her asinine plan to elude the hunter. She is bland and priggish and intolerably boring. There is no way that a girl with so little going for her would have three boys and a super-hot vampire chasing after her. Her only redeeming quality is that she cooks. I’ll say it again. The only thing that this boring-as-bathwater female protagonist has going for her is her culinary skills. I found this to be outrageous.
If Bella were real, she’d be the most useless human being on the planet. There are a grand total of two times that Bella does something completely on her own. The first time is when she’s trying to get information from Jacob about the Cullens. She does so by flirting with him, leading him on and making him think that she likes him more than she actually does. The second time is when she is trying to get away from her father while eluding the hunter. She shakes her father off by intentionally dredging up painful memories about his ex-wife that is nothing short of cruel and manipulative. Bravo, Bella. You are one classy lady. *slow sarcastic clap*
Edward is a fairly flat character as well mainly because of the way he’s described. If Meyer described him as any other way than simply “perfect” or “an Adonis” or “beautiful” it might be different. One could argue that when you’re in love, as the narrator is, then the only thing that comes to your mind are vague thoughts like this. But that only really works in real life. It doesn’t work in books, or at least it shouldn’t. I don’t know how you can make a vampire boring, but Stephanie Meyer has pulled it off in spades.
The Twilight Zone
So here’s the situation: one male vampire that could very easily make a living as an underwear model and has had over a century to develop his own unique personality falls in love with a girl that has all the flavor of filtered water. The question that should spring to mind is: why? There were times while reading that looking for the answer to this question was the only thing that kept me going. Bella actually asks this question a few times, as if she’s somehow dimly aware of the fact that her personality is as featureless as a sheet of drywall. The answer basically came down to the same each time: because Bella is Bella.
I found the title of the book to be particularly apt. Why Edward would even be remotely interested in Bella is so strange, that I can see Rod Serling writing a teleplay about it for “The Twilight Zone.”
“Submitted for your approval: one vampire Adonis smitten by an ordinary girl. Or perhaps ordinary is too kind. Her name is Bella. She is a girl who’s very being rings with mundanity and resounds in boring tones of the bland and uninteresting. Why this creature of the night should be so taken with her is a mystery that not even he can sink his teeth into. All he knows is that he has a thirst, not for blood, but for Bella. A thirst that can only be quenched here…in the Twilight Zone.”
A couple of times when he answered her, I wanted Edward to say it. Just say it, Eddie.
Say: “I love you, Bella my dear, because you are the main character. You see, this book is targeted at young women who will imagine themselves as you for a while and the less personality we give you, the easier it is for them to fill in the very obvious gap that you now occupy in the story. I suppose we could make you more like a real person, giving you at least rudimentary personality traits, but that would be missing the point. I am here, obviously, to fill the role of the perfect man…or vampire, as it were. And you, my beloved, are here as these young women’s placeholder. You are here to take up a space just large enough for them to fit into. You are here to be a vacuum and, baby, when it comes to vacuity, you take the cake. That is why I love you. Now, will you please not ask me for another fifty pages or so? It’s getting harder for me to just shrug off.”
The story, perhaps a bit like a young lover, climaxes earlier than it should. The story basically ends a hundred or so pages before the back cover when Bella and Edward find they truly love each other. It’s as if Meyer typed “THE END” at page 400, then realized that the story as it stood sucked (vampire pun). The sudden appearance of the hunter seems tacked on and obligatory and serves to show that, yet again, Bella is helpless and doomed without her man to save her.
What The Hell Is This?
When evaluating any piece of writing, you should compare what it is, to what it is trying to do; its execution to its intent. It wouldn’t make much sense to complain about a forklift’s inability to get to 110 on the freeway, just like it wouldn’t make much sense to criticize a Lamborghini for its inability to effectively move and lift pallets. So, this leaves me with trying to figure what this book is and it isn’t.
Is it good story? No. There are far too many plot holes and far too much sloppy storytelling for it to even be within throwing distance of good.
Is it well written? Absolutely not. Meyer relies too heavily on adverbs in her dialog attribution. By that I mean, she writes:
“I don’t believe you,” she said incredulously.
&
“Please tell me,” I crooned.
Rarely does she let her characters simply “say” something, which is an indication that her character’s intent was not made clear in the prose. This isn’t a failing fault, Joseph Heller’s “Catch 22” is riddled with this and that’s a fine novel. What’s so damning about this piece is Meyer’s awkward analogies and downright stupid sentences. For example:
She ends a paragraph that describes how afraid she was to confront Edward about his standoffishness with the following: “I made the Cowardly Lion look like the terminator.” I laughed for quite a long time after reading this.
Later on during one of Bella’s many, many bouts of crying (she often cries and most of the time for no apparent reason): “I quickly rubbed my hand across my cheek, and sure enough, traitor tears were there, betraying me.”
Traitor tears betraying you? That’s like saying, “I ate the nourishing food which fueled my body, gave me sustenance and provided the adequate material necessary for metabolic processes to take place within me that would keep me healthy.”
In fact, the writing is so bad that this would almost be genius if it were written tongue-in-cheek. It’s so bad that it could be sold to aspiring writers as case example of consistently horrible writing. In “On Writing” by Stephen King, he says that reading a bad novel can act a vaccine against bad writing, preventing you from making similar mistakes yourself. Well, Twilight is pretty bad and like the aftermath of most vaccines, I’m left feeling a little ill.
So if it’s not a good story and it’s not well written, what is it? It is a sexual fantasy for young women. More than that, it’s pornography without the sex aimed at teenage girls. That’s not a definition of a Romance novel, that’s what this abortion of a novel is and it’s a shame that so many young women are drawn to something so poorly executed. Here’s what Stephen King had to say about this in an interview:
“…A lot of the physical side of [Twilight] is conveyed in things like the vampire will touch her forearm or run a hand over skin, and she just flushes all hot and cold. And for girls, that’s a shorthand for all the feelings that they’re not ready to deal with yet.”
Think for a minute what a male version of Twilight would be—a sexually charged fantasy for teenage boys. Say, for instance, I wrote about a book about—oh, I don’t know—a superhuman woman that falls in love with a boy that has no personality and she happens to have massive breasts. I mean bigger than your head. Instead of drawing powers from the sun like Superman, she draws her power from the male protagonist’s fondling of her jugs.
“Gary…quickly…I’m losing strength…you must…motorboat me…”
“If I must…brrrmrbmbrbrm!”
Crude? Sure, but essentially no different in its goals than Twilight. If this idea comes across as offensive or base, good. It should. This is what Meyer intended this book to be—a base fantasy with almost no artistic merit—and in this respect, she has hit the mark dead center.
Twilight’s Proper Place
When you think about it, it’s not too surprising that people like me are so hostile towards the Twilight fad. My first experience with teenage vampires was “The Lost Boys.” At the time I thought it was just about the coolest movie ever (after Star Wars, of course). Now that I’m older I can see how corny it is, but come on, it’s still pretty badass. Long before Keifer Southerland was Jack Bauer, he was David the motorcycle riding, surf Nazi killing, all around juvenile delinquent vampire. That’s what teenage vampires were when I was growing up. Where are teenage vampires these days? On posters hanging next to boy bands and looking over Barbie dolls or whatever else little girls play with.
Of course we’re pissed! Meyer turned vampires into sissies!
But I digress…
I wouldn’t normally criticize a book this harshly, but when a book this poorly executed sells this many copies, I have to. In fact, when a book is this popular and simultaneously this bad, the author almost deserves ridicule. Would I want to be criticized this unmercifully if I squeezed out something as putrid as Twilight? Oh yes. If I ever drop a deuce on the page that’s as commercially successful as this, I want to know how bad it smells. This is because I actually care about becoming a better writer. From the interviews I’ve read, Meyer seems pretty pleased with herself and I can’t imagine why. Then again, there have been times that I’ve looked down into the toilet bowl and felt a spark of pride, thinking, “I made that. Good for me.” But then I flush.
Conclusion
Kurt Vonagut said that to hate a book is “preposterous” and one that does so is like one…”who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.” I agree, as I do with just about everything else the man said, so it goes. This book should not be hated. It doesn’t make sense to hate a book. It deserves to be kept in the bathroom for purposes other than reading (think about it) but it shouldn’t be hated. Neither should the fans be hated. They’re just, well, confused. One day, if they’re interested enough, these young women will read “Pride and Prejudice” or “Wuthering Heights,” find out what a well written Romance novel should be and toss the Twilight series in the recycle bin. For the time being though, they’re stuck thinking this horrifically told and woefully constructed abomination of a novel is actually good. I weep for them.
When you see a Twilight fan fiercely defending the series, you have to recognize what they’re actually defending. They’re not defending the literary merits of these books. They’re defending their fantasy. I have no problem with that. Have your fantasies, I’ll certainly have mine (brrrmrbmbrbrm!), but be honest with yourself. Call a spade a spade. Your fantasies may not suck, but Twilight certainly does.
So what are we, those strongly against the Twilight fad, to do? The same thing we’ve done in the past. Someday, Twilight will go the way of “The New Kids on the Block.” Someday, perhaps, it might even be ironic to wear a Twilight t-shirt or to read the book in public. Someday, you might say to a friend, “Remember Twilight?” and they’ll say, “Yeah! God, that was awful, wasn’t it? It’s almost as bad as (insert future brainless fad).” But until then, we can only hope.
And flame like crazy on forums.
And ridicule people wearing Twilight merchandise.
And post pictures of Edward photoshopped into gay porn.
And hope.
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