. But my mom and I were at Goodwill last week, and there was a copy of the book--the trade paper edition, not the mass-market movie tie-in with Kristen Stewart's snooty pout--that looked as it if had never been opened, for a ridiculously cheap price. "I don't know if I should buy this or not," I said to my mom. "The back-cover copy makes me cringe. But I do feel like I should read it, just because it's so popular, so I have an idea of what's selling...."
"Well, it's definitely popular," my mom agreed. "And it's related to the kind of writing you do. And you can't beat that price."
I vacillated through the rest of our Goodwill shopping but ultimately decided to buy the darn book. People didn't believe me anyway when I said I hadn't read it.
First of all, I think the cover design is brilliant. To wit:
This is an amazing image for a vampire novel, elegant and intriguing.
The book itself started out better than I expected. To my surprise, Stephenie Meyer can sort of write. She has a more sophisticated vocabulary than I anticipated. After 100 pages, I was even willing to concede that Twilight wasn't bad.
Now I have a confession. When I was about halfway through, I cried myself to sleep, not because of the book itself, but because who doesn't wish for that kind of idealized, perfect romance? Who wouldn't want to meet your soulmate at age 17, experience an immediate and passionate connection, and never have to deal with all the crap of dating and heartbreak and loneliness that the rest of us confront?
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My criticism of Twilight centers on five main areas:
1) I can understand why teenage girls adore this novel. Bella, the heroine, goes to a new school and suddenly finds herself the center of attention. Boys vie to ask her out, girls want to be her friends, and the elusive Edward, of the rich and mysterious Cullens, develops a fascination with her. What teenage girl wouldn't love to be in her place? As a teenager who felt invisible all the time, I fantasized frequently about finding myself in exactly that kind of situation.
But the novel does girls a disservice, because life isn't like that, and relationships don't happen so easily, and miscommunications aren't always resolved within 20 pages. And sometimes you desperately want to believe you're special and have plenty to offer, but you still end up being the last person chosen for the team during gym class, then the last girl sitting at the bar when the lights go up, then the last single person you know....
2) I've seen favorable comments about the approach to sex--waiting until marriage--that Meyer presents because of her Mormon beliefs. Well, I think it's another area in which the novel does no favors to its target audience of teenage girls. Bella is ready to do anything for Edward--not sex explicitly, but she is willing to surrender her life, so sex doesn't seem out of the question--and Edward is the one who exercises restraint. Now, I'm not in the "boys can't control themselves" camp at all, but I do think it's dangerous for teenage girls to think they can put themselves into the kinds of situations Bella repeatedly does--such as cuddling on her bed with a boy she loves and to whom she's passionately attracted--and expect the male involved to steadfastly place the girl's best interests over his hormones and both of their desires. Just sayin'.
3) And that brings me to another area that disturbs me about the novel: the subtle but inherent patriarchy. Edward is the one who calls the shots. Edward decides whether there can be a relationship and what the parameters are. Edward sets and maintains the boundaries. Sure, Bella defies her father, but she really just chooses Edward's (and his "father" Carlisle's) authority instead. And while her clumsiness is kind of endearing, the fact that Edward constantly has to swoop in to save her gets very old very quickly.
4) Why is Edward attracted to Bella, anyway? Bella herself poses this question, and Edward offers a variety of answers: She doesn't realize how beautiful she is. He can't read her mind like he can everyone else's (although it's not clear why this is). And, finally, her blood cries out to him; her scent is like his "brand of heroin."
Why does all this bother me? Well, because Edward's attraction to Bella seems so arbitrary. Sure, she's a likable character, but nothing about her screams, "This is a person someone would wait 100 years to be with." And the reasons Edward gives for his attraction to her are areas over which Bella has no control--her appearance, her scent. What about her personality, her sense of humor, her mind, her ethics, the way she treats other people?
For her part, Bella repeats ad nauseum that Edward is perfect, dazzling, gorgeous, "marble perfection," blah, blah, gag. Granted, in Meyer's vampire mythos all the undead are both charming and physically beautiful--these are weapons in their predatory arsenal--but the extreme gushing over his appearance becomes disgusting eventually. Edward's a vampire, so he'll never have to deal with a paunch or early baldness or flatulence, but I'm pretty sure that after a few hundred years, his physical attractions and magnetism will wear thin even on Bella, unless there's more of substance to hold her. Again, just sayin'.
5) The dialogue really isn't bad until the romantic scenes start, and then it descends into the torrid pit of the purplest prose imaginable and never finds its way out.
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I've struggled with whether I'm taking Twilight too seriously. It's a teen vampire romance, an inherently ludicrous construct to those of us no longer enduring our teens. But that's precisely why I do think it's worth taking seriously: because I know how a book like this would have affected me at that age, how damaging it could have been to my limited and flawed concept of relationships (a concept that had no experiential reality to inform it), how devastating the realization still is that life is different than a novel, different than fantasies, different (and more disappointing) than anything I'd imagined. And I'm sure there are other versions of me out there, reading these books, awkward misfit girls who know they're different and hope desperately that means they're special and that someday, someone will understand that and single them out; who believe that at the deepest, most primal level, their blood will call out to someone like them.
And if they're like me, they might eventually conclude that no one like them exists, and that is a bitter loneliness indeed.
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I've heard from some very intelligent and well-read people that the Twilight novels are addictive, that you get hooked and even though you sort of loathe yourself for it, you still need to read them; they're like crack. I did find the first book engaging, but I don't feel compelled to read the rest. I checked out the plot synopses on Wikipedia, because I was curious about what transpires, but having read those, I'm even less interested in finishing the series.
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