Rotten to the core: Twilight.
Twatlight Twilight fans, cover your eyes! For the following may leave you wanting to suck your stick-on fangs into my neck (and not in the good way).
First a little backstory. I, for some inexplicable reason, felt compelled to buy all the Twilight novels for my trip back to Australia from the UK in July. Not smart since my luggage was already more than 20kg over the allowance. I came to a point at Heathrow Airport where I had to chuck a few books out. I stupidly had accumulated 20 or so books in the 7 months I was over there. So I stood there with few precious minutes to choose which 2 or 3 books to throw out and had come down after rationalising each savior to Twilight et al (newly acquired and begging to be read), Crime and Punishment (a worn but muchly adored copy) and The Secret History (which had been the single most relevant book I had read in that space of time but one that I did want to replace with a prettier copy for this was a plain Penguin issue). So out went Twilight’s two sequels – the third of which had yet to be released – Twilight itself I decided to keep. Having read it just recently can I say with all the confidence in the world that if the first book is any indication throwing out those sequels was the BEST decision I could have possibly made.
I approached the novel quite naively. I had not heard of the Stephenie Meyer-scribed books which seems ridiculous now what with all the hoopla the movie has induced but at the time was more understandable. I don’t think I am a book snob in the least, but the level of writing appears to be aimed at a ten year-old and flaws me that anyone can be so engrossed in such a dull, dull novel. And I use the term “novel” loosely. It’s pulp on pretty paper. The reason why everyone loves these books, in my mind at least, can only be because of the perfect caricature that is Edward Cullen (vampiric love interest). He says all the right things, he’s brooding like only a man can be, he really is perfect. Y’know apart from the whole “I vant to suck your blood” shtick. You can go one of two ways with all his beautifully lyrics phrases – fall madly in love with him or cringe internally. I was oscillating between both for much of the novel.
It was honestly one of the hardest books to finish (and I’ve read some epic neverending novels), maybe because in this kind of teen fantasy genre I’m accustomed to the inviting nature of J.K. Rowlings’ writing style and was expecting similar talent. While it may have some dreamy quality, it lacks imagination in buckets.
This is at it’s core a sexless version of Mills and Boon (which seems like an oxymoron I know). Having read the first and had this kind of reaction to it, I can’t see myself investing in the second, third or God help us, fourth book in this series. I hope some child picked up those books I laid in the airport that day and gleaned more enjoyment from them than I could.
