So, for those of you who don’t live near me, or listen when I talk (which is most of you), I recently read Twilight…and yes, I have now been forced to accept that that does make me less of a man.
I like the fact that the central character, Bella, goes to a small school and is instantly popular. As someone who went to a small school, I understand that if someone from a far larger school transfers in, the common procedure is to regard them as something fascinating and lob them in with the cool kids.
I like this, because Stephenie Meyer could have easily got away with making Bella an outcast and giving her some empathy with the character of Edward. However, rather than taking that distinctly conventional approach, Meyer opted for the more realistic one. Good move Meyer – my compliments – yes readers, it was very painful for me to say that.
Right, onto the things I don’t like and (surprise surprise), they outweigh the things I did like. Firstly, Bella…what the fuck is with this girl? Everything is seen form her perspective – a perspective, which could make Barack Obama look like Satan. This girl is not only negative about everything, she’s an ARSEHOLE. She moves to Forks and it’s shit, she goes to her dad’s house and it’s shit, she goes to school (and is instantly popular) and it’s shit. Not only does she come across as miserable, but also unappreciative, arrogant and bitchy. I read the first chapter, and literally, the only thing that kept me reading past that was the prospect that Bella might get killed later.
Secondly, I have to make issue of Meyer’s writing technique and one major flaw in it that I just couldn’t get past. To give you an example of this, I can refer to the description of Bella’s mother given from Bella’s perspective, in the first chapter: “my mom looks like me, but with short hair and laugh lines”. That seems fine, until you observe that we don’t get a description of Bella herself, until two pages later. When I raised this complaint verbally, a nearby Twilight fan pointed out that Meyer was simply developing the character later…my response to that, is no she fucking wasn’t…that may have been the excuse she used or she may have honestly believed that…To illustrate the point I’m trying to make here,
I’m going to use the example of Doctor Who (I'm sure you're shocked about this). In point, I would like to refer to an episode the first of the revived series in 2005. In the episode called the “Empty Child” the Doctor is told by the character Dr. Constance, that before World War Two he was “both a father and a grandfather and now [he is] neither” the Doctor replies “I know the feeling” implying that he is in the same situation and that he himself had children and grand-children all of which are now dead. This point is again referred to in series two (I can’t remember which episode) when the Doctor makes a remark in passing that he was once a father. We then have to wait till series four, before this is elaborated on in the episode “The Doctor’s Daughter.” How does this relate to my complaint about Twilight? Well it’s very simple, our having to wait that long is the result of the Doctor taking four years to properly come to terms with the fact that his children are dead – although we are told that he had children, his character requires four years of development to give us any more information about that fact. This is the concept of development within a long narrative. This cannot be applied in the way that aforementioned Twilight fan attempted, because she was attempting to apply it, not to a developmental part of the character, but to a PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION!!!!! This doesn’t work, if you’re going to describe what someone looks like, in two separate parts, you don’t start with the last part, then mention the first part later, that doesn’t develop it, that just renders the description completely useless…she might as well of put a footnote in saying “see two pages ahead for full description.”
Thirdly, you might have noticed that I haven't written a brief synopsis of the plot to draw on. The reason for this is that, past the first three chapters, there really isn’t much of a plot to speak of. In fact past the third chapter, the story seems primarily based on repetition of the same thing. Now, I don’t wan to boast, but I have written a draft of what you might call a novel and while I accept my limited experience, next to published writers, I can say that I did get to know how hard it is to write a novel-standard amount of pages, without repeating yourself. This means that I can see what I regard as the primary reason that there is so much repetition in this book and I can empathize, to a degree, with Meyer concerning it. However, even factoring my empathy in, I can’t forgive her for it. I haven’t been taught this, but when I was writing and found myself in a situation where I had to repeat a piece of information, I always tried to paraphrase it, add a new factor to it or even use the fact that it was being repeated as a point of frustration or amusement for the character who was having to repeating it.
Meyer barely even attempts this; Bella and Edward literally have the same conversation about eight times, which goes something like this: Bella: “I’m in love with you” Edward: “but I’m dangerous”.
This same argument between them only disappears in the last chapter and the epilogue. Unfortunately, Meyer chooses this point to raise the argument that will probably dominate the next book: Bella: “I want you to turn me into a vampire” Edward: “but I don’t want to turn you into a vampire”…This is the foundation for a series of books…repetitious arguments that aren’t even altered or rephrased…
I have now reached my fourth and final major complaint…James…I liked this character (why then does he not appear in the good-point section of the review?). it’s quite simple really…Meyer fucked this character up. I loved the idea of a classic vampire who was obsessed with hunting young women. This is how Count Dracula does things and while some could call it conventional, I find it slightly refreshing to actually have a vampire whose threatening, unlike all the Cullens, who are, quite frankly, too nice to be vampires. I have to say that I loved the character of James, right up until he spoke and came into conflict. It seems Meyer is massive fan of Super Hero movies, because, as soon as James has Bella where he wants her, he starts MONOLOGING!!!!! Your aim was to kill her, so kill her…with the exception of some really quite unimportant information about a member of the Cullen family, we already know everything James says to Bella, so what’s the use of him saying it…
Let’s sum up:
I hate Bella, because she’s really a bitch
I hate Edward, because he’s repetitious dumb-shit
I hate the Cullens because their niceness renders them not vampires at all, Meyer makes them almost faultless which strips away anything interesting that could have been done with the characters.
And I hate James, because, after being an interesting character, he starts acting like Lex Luthor.
And I hate the other two vampires who make an appearance, because they really serve no real purpose…
