Stephenie Meyer - Twilight

Book Details:
Author: Stephenie Meyer
Book Type: Soft-cover; 544 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown Young Readers
Publishing Date: September 2006
Language: English
ISBN: 0316015849

Let me preface this review by stating that I am not usually given to reading books geared toward teenagers in general and girls specifically, but after much pestering by my 14-year-old daughter I agreed to read Twilight by one Stephenie Meyer. And while my spouse made it through the first 75 pages and could take no more, I managed to read the book in its entire. For the most part Twilight is a delight to read, if placed in the proper literary context, and ahem, age group.

My Thoughts

For the most part Twilight is a somewhat well-written and researched book. By now almost everyone should be familiar with the premise of the tome, so I will not rehash it here, other than to say it is not territory that has not been covered before. Twilight is a love story, a forbidden love between human and Vampire. Meyer does a good job of reinterpreting the Vampire legend without straying too far outside the well-established lines. In Twilight groups of Vampires have decided that evil and human blood-letting are not the only course for their lives and have taken to drinking to blood on animals instead. So they call themselves Vegans! Go figure.

Isabella (Bella) is written with an angry, stubborn, and remarkably insecure spirit whose temperament is never really fully explained in the narrative of the book. And yet she finds it easy to fall, and fall hard, for Edward the perpetual teen aged Vampire who can run as fast as a sports car, and mesmerize with his eyes. Meyer does a fantastical job of exploring the would-be lovers' emotional attachment to one another, but her descriptive narrative of people, places, and things needs work.

For instance, a clear picture of Bella never formed in my mind because Meyer failed to describe her-even minutely-in the book. The most we know is that Bella is Caucasian and has brown hair; that's it. I had to go to Meyer's website for a description of our heroine. This to me is a grievous oversight.

Still another example: Meyer's failure to describe at all the climactic battle between Edward and James. Meyer did a good job, I might even say masterful job, of building up the suspense leading up to Bella's rescue, but failed to deliver the (detailed) goods! I kept waiting for it (the super human fight between Vampires) to scroll across the page, but as the book drew to a close, I realized-shockingly-that the battle would not be described within the confines of the novel. An unforgivable and unbelievable omission! What was Meyer thinking?

At times Twilight plodded along at a pace akin to watching the moon traverse the night sky, but overall the novel kept my interest enough that I finished it 544 pages in two weeks-given my schedule, that is quick for me.

Twilight was easy enough to read though Meyer found it necessary to throw in "big" world every now and again in an effort to prove that her grasp of the English language was deeper than an episode of Hanna Montana. I found the shoe-horning of these words into the novel disconcerting and wholly unnecessary given the book's target audience.

I found most of the characters in Twilight remarkably one-dimensional and superficially drawn out. None of the characters were explored in any depth; they all lacked color and interest. Bella at 17-years-old was far too stubborn and put upon for girl her age, and Edward should have been far wiser having lived almost 100 years.

In the final analysis my instinct to stay away from Twilight were well justified. Though I did enjoy the book on a completely superficial level, the fact that I was not the target audience made itself felt throughout the paperback. Twilight is not a book I would ever pick up for another read.