Twilight

By Stephanie Meyer

Summary Main Review
01-0708-1011-1516-2021-23

Review

Having spent so much time reading, critiquing, and alternatively laughing at or cringing over this book, I have pinpointed the emotion Twilight evokes: underwhelmed. The plot is a good idea, in theory. Girl moves to new town, winds up developing an Epic And True love with a vampire. A bit trite, but do-able with the right tools and with a certain amount of genre awareness.

Meyer possesses neither, and the result is a book that is self indulgent to the point of inertia. It has been said by many people, and I’ll say it here and now: I have read better fanfiction in the pit of voles, than what is presented in this novel. Not to say that Twilight does not occasionally rise above mediocrity – it does so approximately three times – but those instances only further highlight the poor quality the rest of the book suffers from.

The secondary and tertiary cast – which is essentially anyone who is not Bella or Edward – suffer from varying levels of one-dimensionalism, or from being more interesting than Bella and Edward combined. An author is doing something wrong when a background character is more interesting and more detailed based solely on a throw-away one-liner. What we do see of Bella and Edward is disturbing and rife with sexism, not sexuality.

There are 24 chapters plus an epilogue – the action doesn’t start until chapter 18, and seems more like an after thought, a need for external conflict once Bella and Edward had established their mutual attraction for each other and Meyer realized she still needed a few extra chapters.

Before I continue, I would like to apologize for focusing so much of the review on the behavior of Bella Swan and Edward Cullen. Given the narrow focus of Twilight, there is not much else to comment upon.

Twilight suffers from having Bella narrate it. I often wondered who she was narrating to, since she is clearly not writing journal entries or talking to herself. In any case, Bella is a lukewarm protagonist. She often wonders what Edward sees in her, and having to read this through her point of view, I usually wonder too. Bella is a poorly distinguished character, despite spending the entire book in her brain. Arguably, this is so she can stand in for the reader (or as some have argued, for Meyer), but I can’t imagine anyone would want to. What few characteristics Bella displays are so negative who would want to stoop to being her?

Despite claiming to be plain and ordinary, she nevertheless holds herself above the people who are being friendly to her, and keeps herself separate from her peers. She disdains and disparages them in her private thoughts even as she goes through the motions of a social life. Bella considers any interaction with her ‘friends’ a chore, although those people have been nothing but open and friendly towards her. Similarly, Bella does not have much of a relationship with her own father beyond cooking for him and living in his house, and has an aversion to contacting her mother, her supposed “best friend.” Bella’s crowning moment of awesome (her plan to avoid James and protect her family) is canceled out by her dethroning moment of suck (not informing the Cullen’s of the supposed hostage situation of her mother). The few actions Bella is capable of making on her own turn out to be bad ones, placing her firmly in the “damsel in distress” role, and making her utterly reliant on her vampire saviors (ie: Edward) to rescue her.

Perhaps the only thing that isn’t worth harping on his her obsession with Edward – until she discovers he’s a vampire. Up until that point, Bella is arguably like any teenage girl with a crush. Afterwards however, she becomes akin to someone who is mentally ill. It is one thing to have a crush on a strange, cute boy. It is another to be “in love” with someone you have never had a full conversation with, to the point of disregarding your own well being when said person admits to wanting to kill you and everyone around you.

For all intents and purposes, Bella is not a character – she is a vessel for the very thin story. She behaves as the story requires – docile, flat, whiny, and passive-aggressive for the most part, with only occasional flare ups of actual personality. Her desire to be a vampire seems out of synch with her supposed love of her parents and her friends. Arguably, to become a vampire she’d have to give them up, but this is never brought up or considered.

Perhaps the biggest failure of Bella’s character is the fact that she is entirely dependant on Edward to be even remotely interesting. If Bella had never moved to Forks, would anyone care about what happened to her? What would her life had been like? Outside of Forks, and Edward, Bella fades into nonexistence. She has no hobbies, no strong opinions beyond nerds-are-lame and she hates Forks and everything in it (at least until she starts snogging Edward).

Speaking of Edward – talk about malfunction junction. If Bella is the proxy (for the reader/Meyer, whichever), then Edward is where the indulgent wish fulfillment comes in. The boy is pretty, a vampire, and sparkles. I’m sorry, vampires have had some pretty horrendous things done to them for the sake of keeping the immortal bloodsuckers alive in modern culture, but the sparkling has pretty much castrated the vampires in this book. Apparently I am supposed to feel threatened by something that looks like it dumped a bottle of the ren-faire “fairy dust” all over itself. Clap your hands if you believe!

Edward is threatening, but not for the reasons Meyer intends him to be. Straight from the beginning, Edward displays mood swings, and manipulative and domineering behavior. Edward shows little respect for Bella’s personality or physical being – frequently laughing at her, picking her up and manhandling her like a doll, not considering her ideas or worries when danger arises, and not accepting responsibility for his actions. But once you get past Edward’s “virtues” – he’s pretty, he vamps, he writes music, and he loves you Bella – Edward has very little worth desiring. Bella treats his obsessive behavior as if it’s ok because Edward is hot and their love is Epic And True.

Like Bella, I put Edward to a “what if” test. If Edward were human, would his behavior be acceptable? Hell no. Edward’s only redeeming quality so far is that despite his extremely disturbing behavior, he’s still more interesting than Bella, and not as annoying. I didn’t have to listen to him whine for most of the book.

While I found Edward more tolerable, I still didn’t find him the swoon worthy adonis. His numerous vampire traits did not inspire hot loving desire for him. Sorry, but cuddling and making out with a marble statue does not strike me as comfortable.

List Of Secondary Characters