Stephen King often has problems with plotting and logorrhea, but his characterizations are generally very believable, and his voice authentic. I cannot say the same for Meyer. Her characters, even the two leads, are two dimensional. Bella is worse than Edward because she literally has no interests outside Edward.
I think it’s great that you’re reading books that interest your daughter. More parents should do that. Gives you something to talk about and if she reads books with messages you don’t agree with, you can discuss it from an informed position.
I visited an old friend over the holidays and she’d borrowed her teenage half-sister’s copy of Twilight. We took turns reading it out loud (with my friend’s husband and one of his friends sometimes joining in), and it was HILARIOUS. We laughed so hard we cried. My friend fell off the couch at one point.
We got about 1/3 of the way in before the visit ended so I don’t know what happened in the rest of the book, but based on the first part I’d guess that there are hundreds of pages more of Bella whining, Bella gushing about how perfect Edward is, and Bella falling down. Bella says she’s “clumsy”, but since she’s capable of cooking without dropping things all over the kitchen or making a big mess then I don’t think that can explain her inability to even walk through a doorway without falling over. We were all hoping that maybe she’d turn out to have a fatal neurological disorder, but the working theory we developed was that Bella just kept swooning because the blood drained from her head every time she thought about how sexy Edward was.
I have never read a book with a protagonist I hated more than Bella Swan. I’ve read Crime and Punishment, A Clockwork Orange, and even Mansfield Park, but every one of those characters was more sympathetic than Bella. She whines about how much she hates moving and how she’ll be a total freak with no friends at her new school, but then when she’s instantly the most popular girl in school she whines about how shallow all her classmates are and how all these guys keep asking her out. When Edward revealed that he could read everyone’s mind but hers, I said “That’s the only reason he can stand you. If he could hear your thoughts he’d hate you as much as we do.” We were all rooting for the truck. My friend’s husband declared that the only thing that would make Twilight tolerable would be if Bella were like Kenny on South Park and got killed in every chapter.
Edward didn’t get on my nerves as much just because he wasn’t around for a good portion of the first part of the book, but his “romance” with Bella was already looking like a blueprint of an abusive relationship. He follows her around to “protect” her even though he’s also obsessed with thoughts of killing her, isolates her from her friends, and tells her what to do. But it’s okay, because terrible things would happen to her without him around. And also he’s really hot.
Even if this book had a great plot (or even A plot) and the characters were delightful, Meyers is a terrible writer. The woman never met an adverb or adjective she didn’t like, even if she wasn’t totally clear exactly what it meant. (My friend kept saying “And that’s another place where she hit Shift-F7 and picked a synonym at random from the thesaurus.”) She wastes page after page on mundane incidents that have nothing to do with the story, like Bella’s First Trip to the Forks Grocery Store, Bella Makes Chicken Enchiladas, and Bella Looks at Slides in Science Class. I suspect all the scenes of Bella cooking were really there because Meyers got distracted from her own stupid book with thinking about what she was going to make for dinner that night.
When faced with a bad book I usually think to myself, “Well, how many books have I written? I’d love to have written an entire book but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do it. While this author may not be very talented then s/he’s still accomplished something in finishing this book. I’ve never even written a bad book.” But if I had been the person writing Twilight, I would have stopped after a few pages and said “I guess I’m really not cut out to be a writer. This is awful.” For the sake of my own pride and the good of all humanity, I would have left that book unfinished.
You have to stop thinking of them as YA and reclassify them as romance novels. Poorly written romance novels at that-that’s what gives you the basis for her clumsiness wahwahwah. In most romance novels you have to make the super-smart heroine less threatening by burdening her with some “adorable” quirk that makes her vulnerable and therefore justifies the Mr. Rochestering by the hero-protagonist. Poor sense of direction/clumsiness seems to be popular because then the hero can smoulder/smirk in heroine’s direction while gently setting her on the right path/taking care of her. I think it’s a sexual tension heightening deal.
And that makes it all sound like a pity fuck. And what is with making the female be so flawed, but the male perfect? To hell with that.
It’s a YA book. It’s not really a romance novel–it’s 2 narcissistic wankers expounding on True Love. If Meyers had developed Bella a bit more–why the hate by her for her name, Isabella, btw? Why are these things introduced then left to sit around until another detail pushes them off the page?
If she had made Bella more than cardboard, if she had drawn out the conflict between Bella and Edward–if she had even stipulated ONE reason for them getting off on the wrong foot from the Meet Cute, it would have been better.
The book is poorly written, no question. That is not what disturbs me. It’s the hysteria around the book that bothers me. Please let Meyers stop writing this shite and so it can die down.
The weirdest thing about this is that the oddest thing about the books is not that a human is in love with a vampire–that is the sanest thing in these books.
Exactly. None of the creepiest things about the Edward/Bella relationship have anything to do with Edward being a vampire. It’s creepy because Edward stalks and controls Bella and because Bella, literally, has nothing going on in her life except Edward. Nothing.
The vampirism in the series is totally incidental. Firstly, being a vampire in the Twilightverse has absolutely no negative consequences whatsoever. They’re immortal, invincible, beautiful, super powerful and fast, and have all kinds of other X-Men-y powers. They not only don’t have typical vampire weaknesses, they have no weaknesses whatsoever. Even the werewolves aren’t much of a threat.
Secondly, there’s not even any moral problem with the Cullens because they only drink animal blood. There’s not even any metaphysical junk like there was between Angel and Buffy, because the only person concerned with any religious implications of vampirism is Edward and pretty much everybody else dismisses his worries out of hand.
Oh I understood that Bella’s clumsiness was really there because Meyers thought her total Mary Sue protagonist needed to have some token flaw. (I totally loved the scene where Bella is describing her physical appearance and says basically “Oh woe is me, surely no one at my new school will like me because I am a willowy brunette!”) But Meyers can’t even write something as simple as clumsiness or poor sense of direction convincingly or consistently.
Bella is so clumsy that she’s constantly falling over for no reason? Her sense of direction is so poor that she gets lost in the woods when she’s still practically in sight of her house? And despite her supposed poor sense of direction, Bella repeatedly says things like “I headed east into the woods” or “I walked north through town”. (This happened so often that I finally said “Is she carrying a compass around with her?”) Since Bella also complains on virtually every page how it’s always cloudy, she can’t even be figuring out cardinal directions based on the position of the sun.
That was great how she kept snarling at people she’d just met and thinking how much she hated them just because they’d failed to magically guess her preferred nickname. No wonder she had no friends in Phoenix.
Yeah, IIRC Bella decided Edward hated her pretty much because he didn’t immediately fall all over her like every other guy in school. He gives her a dirty look in science class and then ignores her. Not very friendly, but Bella had already been told that the Cullens kept to themselves, and a teen boy (or so he seemed) acting sullen and uncommunicative is nothing remarkable. I would have assumed that the guy was just a jerk, or if I were feeling charitable think that maybe he was really shy or had a stomach ache or something.
Instead Bella becomes obsessed with the mystery of why one boy in the whole school doesn’t seem to like her*, is convinced that he wants to change classes just to avoid her, that he skips school to avoid her, etc. And worst of all, she’s right. It IS all about her, and what a special snowflake she is. Or, as my friend and I kept adding as we read the book aloud, “Because I am Princess Emo and I am so much better than everyone else.”
*And the secondary mystery of why his eyes change color. Really. I couldn’t tell you the eye color of most of the people I know, and I sure wouldn’t notice their eyes gradually becoming darker every day, especially not from across the cafeteria, but somehow Bella not only notices but cares about the eye color of a boy she’s barely spoken to. I like to imagine her with one of those paint swatch samples, saying “On Monday Edward’s eyes were Harvest Gold, but today they’re looking more Antique Amber.”
Oh, I got the eyes thingie right away! They go black when Edward’s in need of flesh, and lighten after he’s topped off his need (slaked his thirst? sated his unnatural appetite? how many cliches can I come up with? Not as many as StephEnie can!)
Edward’s eyes are the windows into his soul, dontchaknow. I sorta imagine them as a gauge, with blood sloshing behind the golden iris–the more blood he’s got on board, the darker the hue… Oh, wait–I may have that backwards. Please don’t make me read it again to see if I’m right or wrong.
I have a 21-year-old coworker who adores the damn books. I hope my laughter didn’t annoy her too much when she told me about the sparkly vampires. (But how else was I supposed to react, may I ask? Sparkles???)
I forgive her based on age (she’s a very young 21), but so far have dodged actually reading these or seeing the movie. Thankfully.
I just finished the first book after my SIL was raving about it and “everybody at work is just obsessed with it”.
The character of Bella just simply pisses me off. She has no personality whatsoever. She’s characterized like a simple little fragile bimbo that doesn’t have a brain between her ears. She’s willing to sacrifice her life to “save” the Cullens from the tracker. Puhleeze.
What a great message to give to young girls Ugh.
Oh, and did I mention how BEAUTIFUL and PERFECT Edward is? Ugh.
Every time I hear the name Edward Cullen, I think of how much better/more amusing it would be with a more famous/sympathetic Cullen…
Tom Cullen from Stephen King’s The Stand
Bella, I love you, and you’re so pretty, M-O-O-N, that spells pretty
Bella, you shouldn’t love me because I’m a dangerous vampire, M-O-O-N, that spells dangerous vampire, Laws yes!
I can’t go out in the sun, because the sun makes vampires sparkle, M-O-O-N, that spells sun!, oh and it spells vampire too, laws yes!
See how much better it is with Tom Cullen, M-O-O-N, that spells better!
The weird thing is that some people manage to walk away from the book with the idea that Bella is smart. I have no idea how this happens.
Bella is a fucking idiot. It not only takes her wayyy too long to figure out the whole vampire thing, after she’s been introduced to the world of the supernatural she approaches it with the intellectual curiosity of a gerbil. Twists and turns in the story (such as they are) are typically evident to anybody with half a brain hundreds of pages before Bella gets around to figuring it out (when she does; more frequently Edward has to tell her what’s going on).
In later books (not really a spoiler), it’s mentioned that Bella reads Wuthering Heights over and over again because she doesn’t care enough to go out and get another book. Gah!
Yet I’ve read a lot of people try to paint her as some kind of Hermione Granger-type nerd when that could not be farther from the truth.
Quoting myself to remind everyone where I came in.
Listen, if kids can read this stuff and separate fantasy from reality: and if kids actually take up reading as a hobby because of this, I’m quite frankly prepared to categorically state that this is a good thing. Surely a well-adjusted kid can realize fantasy and compartmentalize that aspect while reading. Christ , I Know I could at 11 years old.
The problem is that an 11 year old doesn’t have a really strong idea of what a romantic relationship is supposed to be like because they have no experience. They think that a beautiful boy who loves you breaking into your room to watch you sleep is romantic, or that a boy wanting to be with you 24 hours a day, to the exclusion of all others, is what true love is supposed to be, or that wanting to commit suicide when this boy breaks up with you is normal if you’re really, truly in love. Yes, I’ve encountered all these views in my 7th grade students. It takes some explaining to get them to realize that this is not healthy behavior and that these characters are not behaving as people really would. They do need adults to give them some perspective, because there is no adult perspective in the books.
[spoiler]Nessie (stupid name, but still better than her real one) is different from the Immortal Children (I love how they’re so scary they get Capitalized) because she’s half human, and therefore capable of growing and learning, while they were infants and toddlers who were bitten and turned into vampires, thus remaining frozen forever. Which begs the question of how you change the diaper of an angry 18 month old who is capable of tearing your arm off and beating you to death with it.
Irina thinks Nessie is an Immortal Child, since no one (in white European civilization, anyway), has ever heard of a half-mortal, half-vamp baby. Her “mother” was killed by the big bad Volturi for harboring an Immortal Child and she’s bitter, so she goes to Italy to rat out the Cullens, feeling it to be her civic duty.
Bella never intends for her and Edward to leave with Nessie and Wolfy. She gets papers for them, hoping they’ll be able to slip away during the fight and go live creepily ever after in South America, but she thinks she and Edward are going to die. Which could have been a cool ending, but I fear the sequels that would have wrought: “Nessie and Jacob: The Rio Years.” No!
The guy Alice shows up with is totally random and unrelated to anyone or anything else we’ve read before, save a vague reference from Edward’s cleaning lady on the island - I think is name is Deus Ex. He’s a half-mortal, half-vamp that Alice rooted out in South America where he and his half-sisters have been hanging out for a couple of hundred years inspiring local legends (hence my earlier comment about white European civilization, but I wonder why the Amazon vampires never said, "You know, back home we have these stories…)[/spoiler]
I might be tempted to compare these books to Scandinavian sagas, if it weren’t for the fact that Scandinavian sagas are, you know, good. Still, there’s two-dimensional characters, there’s a sense that you can do whatever you want but fate is going to win every damn time, there’s a ton of background information that has no bearing on the story itself, it takes forever for the plot to arrive (and then it kind of sits around going, “Should I say something to draw attention to myself?”), and the humor (or attempts at humor) is about as subtle as a semi-truck.
And yet I can’t…stop…reading them. Cleolinda is right, they’re like Twinkies.
You really are a vampire! Does that mean that garlic, stakes, and sunlight kill you?
ROBERT PATTINSON:
Don’t be stupid. All of that lore is far too interesting for this movie. Being a vampire just means I get superpowers. It’s like being Spider-Man, but sexier. Also, I sparkle in the sunlight."
