Two Stars
Beware! There will be spoilers for this book and the original Twilight Saga aplenty here!
Look, I don’t actually hate the
Twilight books. I think I need to make that clear upfront because I suspect that
I am not going to have a lot positive to say about Stephanie Meyer’s latest
book Midnight Sun, a retelling of Twilight from the point of view of
Edward Cullen.
The original four books were fine.
The story arc actually made a lot of sense once the reader reached the end of
the story. Bella Swann was born to be a vampire. Literally. That’s why she was
so klutzy as a human, she’d been living as the wrong species for seventeen
years. She was somehow already imbued with the supernatural spooky woo magic
and nobody really realised until she got to Forks. A place where presumably
there was enough residual werewolf/vampire magic sloshing around to ensure that
Bella – hitherto nondescript and ignored by the boys at her Arizona school - was
even a desirable siren to the muggles.
And she was of course irresistible
to Edward the brooding vampire. They fall into a love that is deep and wide and
heavy and all-consuming and stuff and a whole bunch of dangerous hi-jinks ensue before
the happy couple (and their magical offspring) get their happy ending and go
skipping off into the sunrise.
Which is all well and good. But we
did that already. Why the need for the new book? Why, specifically did I
feel the need to spend £10.99 on a book where at least 50% of the text is
exactly the same as a book I’ve already purchased? There should have been some
kind of discount for people who bought the original book, surely? I’ve already
paid for this dialogue!
And, while we’re questioning the
wisdom of me buying this book in the first place, why am I reviewing it here on
a website that is usually focused on fiction which a good deal more sexy,
spanky and salacious than this high-school-based apparently doomed romance? I don’t
really have a good answer to that. I feel that Twilight does fit in
quite happily amongst my usual sort of romantic fare. The tropes are the same,
there’s a flawed hero and a submissive-yet-feisty heroine, obstacles to be overcome
and (eventually) a happy ever after that will literally go on for ever in this
case. There are lines like “She gasped in reaction, her lips parting against mine,
the fever of her breath burning my skin”. And, of course, Twilight famously inspired
the Fifty Shades of Grey books.
The story begins with Bella’s
first day at her new school. Edward – in whose brain the reader will now live
for the next 671 pages – is all too aware of the arrival of the new girl. This
is because he is besieged with the thoughts of all the other students and they
all seem to be thinking “There’s a new girl starting today, wonder what she’s like?”
The way in which the innermost
thoughts of the local human population are depicted is my first real problem
with this book. All the thoughts that Edward eavesdrops on seem remarkably tidy.
People apparently think in full sentences as though they’re composing their daily
journal.
I really don’t think people think that
way. I certainly don’t. I have no idea how I would begin to write down the
jumbled, cacophonous noise that makes up my continual inner monologue; the
snippets of songs, imaginary conversations, berating inner critical voice and
the Tourettes-like mental blurtings running through my head – usually all at
the same time.
You can see why Meyers doesn’t try
to render this sort of stream of consciousness into words in Midnight Sun.
It would turn the whole thing into some kind of sub-Joycean gobbledegook. And,
really, everybody else’s thoughts are only there as a plot device. Edward’s
head-hopping is one of the many creepy ways that he can keep a metaphorical eye
on Bella.
I can accept that the vampire
characters have tidier more organised thoughts than the rest of us. They know
that they’re being listened to, for one thing. Also, vampires are Weird and Not
Like Us Humans. I think that’s the one bit of vampire canon we can agree on.
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Not Like Us
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The most original bits of the book
– and therefore the most interesting – are when Edward takes trips down memory
lane and we discover more about what he was up to during his early pre-Bella
vampire years. Why couldn’t we have had more of that? A Twilight prequel would
have been a lot more fun than a scene-by-scene re-telling of an existing book.
The first half of this book really
drags. We’re way past the halfway mark before Edward even does his sparkly skin
party trick. (And the build-up to that goes on forever. It’s tedious having to
listen to Edward worry about how Bella is going to find him repulsive and
disgusting once she finds out e can look like he’s made of diamonds. Because,
yeah, humans hate sparkly things, obviously. The whole nature of Edward’s
hideous skin aberration is kept coyly under wraps during Edward’s prolonged
mithering. We already know that he glitters like a Claire’s Accessories
headband in the sunlight! There can’t be a single person reading this book who
hasn’t either read the books, watched the films or seen at least one of
the hundreds of Twilight Tinkerbell memes
The minutiae of Bella’s mostly humdrum
life is fascinating to Edward. Not so much for the rest of us. Did everything
take so long to happen in the original book? Quite possibly. I think I have
compressed all four Twilight books into one narrative in my head so I’ve
forgotten how much of the first book was just spent faffing about.
Like the original book, it all
kicks off later on with perilous mortal danger and whatnot. But it isn’t improved
any by being narrated by one of the undead.
He might be over a hundred years
old but this glimpse into Edward’s psyche just demonstrates that he is in fact a
whiny little seventeen year old at heart. At one point Edward says “I wished …
I wouldn’t have time to obsess over and over again about the same problems”.
So do we, Edward. So do we.
This book was twelve years in the
making. I’m sure Twilight’s many fans are pleased that it’s here. But really,
there was little point in it existing in the first place. If there are any new
insights into Edward’s character, I’m afraid it was all rather lost in the
relentless teenage existential angst. Edward Cullen is literally a mythological
creature, you think it would be fun time to spend time in the head of a
monster. Sadly, Meyers has demonstrated that it isn’t.