Friday, April 06, 2007

Twilight, Stephenie Meyer


I bought this book from Waterstones on Wednesday and finished it last night.
It is a hugely annoying book. It's awful. I am deadly jealous.
No one, should be allowed to have this much talent. It's obscene. Sigh.
Okay, so I was lying when I said it's awful. That was me being jealous, greenly jealous. Ms. Meyer has an incredible talent and Bella Swann is a fantastic character, her inner life vividly drawn and the vampire she falls in love with will no doubt beat up the self-absorbed Lestat with one hand tied behind his back - both literally and figuratively. I am not a big fan of vampire stories - thank you for destroying that genre, LKH and AR, but this, this is something vastly different.
The storytelling is vivid, you can picture the town of Forks in your mind, the wet forest, the cold, the slowness of it all, the rare days when the sun does shine...and then the myths of the vampires. It sort of gets turned on its head a bit, but in a totally believable way.
Bella, as the MC, is a believable seventeen year old, with her feet planted firmly in the real world. She has her issues, and her hang ups, and is very innocent but very wise at the same time, having looked after a bit of a ditzy mother all her young life, until she decides to move to Forks and live with her father, Chief Swann of the local police force. Charlie is a cool dad, not very verbose, like Bella, so they get along perfectly fine. And it is an interesting relationship - very little trust issues.
It is a very personal and personable novel. I don't want to tell too much about the storyline because, hey, its more than girl meets boy, boy is a vampire, girl doesn't care, girl is in danger...much more.
I am struggling to get into anything else at the moment. Mainly because the writing style of Ms Meyer was just so beautiful. I think I need quite a break from reading, just to get Bella and Edward exorcised from my mind, a bit. The good news is, the follow-up novel will be out soon in paperback - it's in hardback at the moment. Waits impatiently by the clock.

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