Bite Me, Suck It, and Fuck Off
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer / Sarah Larson
Book Reviews | September 10, 2008 | Comments (95)
Publisher’s Note: Due to some internal miscommunication, we assigned a review for both the last book in Stephenie Meyer’s series , which was posted last week, and this, the original book in the Twilight series, the source material for the upcoming film. Also, we can’t get enough of Twilight around her. Love it!
In the interest of full disclosure, let me start off by saying that I was predisposed to dislike Twilight. I hate romance novels and I am ambivalent at best with regard to vampires. I tried reading Anne Rice when I was about 13 and she was at the height of her popularity, and I haaaaaaated her books. They gave me hives. I’ve never read the Anita Blake series, but I’m familiar with the premise and they sound like the dumbest damn things in the world. I have a friend who reads them and forces me to endure painful phone conversations wherein she yammers about Anita Blake for, like, an hour and a half … and I play Mario Kart on my Super Nintendo and make noncommittal noises of faux-listening at random intervals and only absorb about every forty-fifth word she says. To be fair, Super Nintendo is usually what happens whenever I’m involved in a phone conversation lasting longer than ten minutes, but holy shitcakes, Anita Blake is boring. I did like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” but not because it had anything to do with vampires. It was just an awesome show that happened to have vampires in it.
Twilight? Is not awesome. Not at all. I tried; I really tried to take a mental step back from my preconceived notions and see if I could find the secret of the big hairy deal about this book. What I found? Was a pile of ass. With hemorrhoids on it. And also a barnacle. In summary, awkward teen Bella (who has a messed-up relationship with her needy, immature mother) moves in a fit of pique exiles herself to a tiny, gloomy, perpetually rainy Pacific Northwest town, where she lives with her father (with whom she has a messed-up relationship, because he is absentee to the point of inconsequence). Enter angsty “heartthrob” Edward, who is basically an Abercrombie & Fitch mannequin stuffed with obsessive tendencies and halfheartedly animated, like the shadow puppet version of a compulsive stalker who ate a boxful of waterlogged fireworks. Oh, and he’s a vampire, which is apparently supposed to be inherently sexy or something. Commence messed-up relationship, complete with an alarming degree of isolation and bizarre, psychotic mood swings.
None of the relationships in this book are even remotely healthy. I guess Edward fits the darkly mysterious archetype, and I know the tortured hero is classically romantic or whatever, but the intensity of his focus on Bella is frankly unnerving. Bella doesn’t really have a personality, as such; she’s just a bit of fluff to be tossed about by the furious winds of manipulation around her. Her identity is defined by the needs of others, and she’s so subservient it’s genuinely disturbing. The closest she comes to asserting any independence of mind is by asking a bazillion questions, and even then she seeks permission to do so. I am mystified and bothered in the extreme that hordes of tiny tots are reading this drivel and finding it romantic. I mean, I get that young girls love dramatic moodiness, but this garbage is just so profoundly unsettling.
The jacked-up stalkerish creepiness of the codependent relationship at the centre of this book has been much-ballyhooed by many, of course, but by no means is it the only stink emanating from this dump. Let’s start with the sparkling, shall we? Edward, who is a vampire, sparkles. He SPARKLES. What the fucking fuck? Are you kidding me? And then there are the names. Bella Swan and Edward Cullen? What the hell is this, Undead Sweet Valley High? Oh wait, that’s exactly what it is, except dumber and more psychotic.
Meyer’s prose didn’t exactly blow my mind either, to put it mildly. I once taught a short story workshop for junior high students, and aside from the unnecessarily excessive length, Twilight is pretty similar to the stuff those kids produced. There are lukewarm character motivations, overly wrought dramatic moments and histrionics aplenty, and none of it is executed with particular skill. Now, having read the book, I’m still lost as to the reason for its phenomenal popularity. I know part of the disconnect here is my own lack of interest in this sort of fanciful tomfoolery, but I still spent 498 pages searching for the elusive magic that has made so many people swoon over this book. I never felt like I found any magic, and I’m more confused about the appeal of Twilight than I was before reading it.
Sarah Larson is not the scorpion-eating famewhore who once dated George Clooney. She lives in Minnesota, where she is usually up to no good. You can find her monitoring the imminent undead armageddon at Zombie Forecast, or hardly ever updating her woefully neglected blog at Unscheduled.
Comments
Posted by: Kevin Longrie at September 10, 2008 12:57 PM
I worked at a borders for the releases of her third book in that series and for "The Host," her first "adult novel." I haven't read one damn page of any of them, but I can tell you I don't understand what the hell my 34 year old male manager was doing reading all of them, and trying to tell me that "The Host" was "gritty" and that the twilight series itself was "really well written...Stephanie Meyer is like...a good author."