breaking dawn
so, i wasn’t going to read breaking dawn. i was pretty smug about it. i thought to myself, “yeah, i couldn’t care any less than i do about that annoying bella person.” and then i snagged myself. i picked up a copy in an airport bookstore and read the first chapter.
that night i had a dream. (yes, ms. meyer, this is right up your alley.) i dreamed that in order to finish my master’s requirements (don’t worry, this is a terrifying graduate school dream that doesn’t involve any nudity) i had to take a class on fiction writing from stephenie meyer. i found myself at a mixer for the start of the year explaining to another classmate why i was absolutely mortified by this requirement. “she can’t write,” i explained. “her characters lack depth. all her books hinge on the power of lust. each character in the book is a cliche of a cliche.” and on and on dream jes went explaining herself. at some point fellow classmate says to me, “yeah. i’m stephenie meyer’s husband, but i have to agree with you. she’s not that great of a writer.”
i’m not sure exactly the cosmic weight of such a dream, but you go ahead and ponder.
and now, on to slaughter breaking dawn. at first i was delighted with meyer’s plot twists. a baby ripping its way out of a mother’s uterus with her teeth = cool. jacob imprinting on the baby with the impossible name (renesmee) = totally unexpected. [and please, all you crazy baby namers out there, don’t pick renesmee up! please!] bella actually turning into a vampire = thank goodness. (i could not have lived through another minute of her incessant whining.)
but then meyer let me down. the ending felt so contrived. too simple. everything added up too easily. (and meyer never had me believing for a second that alice had abandoned the “family.”) the last hundred pages or so were nothing but tedious. i was actually rooting for the volturi to incinerate the guts out of everybody by the end.
but let’s think about this a little more. meyer is writing in a genre that is inherently good natured. ya fiction usually ends happily with all the loose ends tied up. kids need that sort of black and white to the world where the good end happily and the bad unhappily.
and if you’re mad at meyer for her lack of morality and for the sexuality of the novels–take a step back. i wonder if we wouldn’t be so quick to flog her if she wasn’t mormon and we didn’t expect some sort of higher than usual moral ethic.
to her credit, she does enter a little paragraph about bella being unable to imagine giving herself to someone without the commitment of marriage attached. (i don’t recall that being a popular sentiment in the world at large lately.)
in the end, meyer has written out every tween girl’s fantasy: to find herself loved by someone impossibly beautiful and perfect, to discover that she has latent powers that will save her family and friends unexpectedly, to stumble upon a physical beauty she never dreamed of, to have someone admit to her that she didn’t belong in the normal world and was destined for something greater.
ultimately, i can’t be angry with meyer. let’s face it: her book is published and mine isn’t. she’s got gazillions of dollars and adoring fans and i don’t.
we’re all just jealous of her, aren’t we?
[and, as long as we’re on the subject, there is a mormon author writing young adult fiction whose prose sparkles and whose stories are simply enchanting. if you haven’t been introduced to shannon hale and her glorious books, don’t waste another minute. start with the goose girl and you’ll be too in love with hale’s characters to give a passing thought to vampires.]
Filed under young adult lit |8 Responses to “breaking dawn”
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I totally, totally agree with you. I fell asleep during the last 100 pages–predictable! But overall a very enjoyable read and it’s true, we just pick her apart because we’re jealous.
amen. it’s true her novels are more that ‘clean’ compared to non-mormon YA lit, but the part that irks me is that she puts she’s a byu alumnus as her first bi-line. can’t she just be happy with the gazillions she makes from barnes and noble and leave deseret book alone?
I’m with you on Shannon Hale. Huge fan of that book.
As far as Meyer goes: I have no writing aspirations, so my angst cannot be attributed to jealousy. And while I find her books mostly gripping (although somewhat predictable) and very entertaining, I must say that I have never read anything so libidinous. Am I the only one who gets turned on by reading these things?! And call me puritanical, but for me that makes it problematic. I mean, I feel like I’m reading soft porn or something. And that makes me kind of uncomfortable. Especially coming from a Mormon.
Anyway, I’m a fan. But a reluctant, resentful one.
I was not as drawn into BD as I was some of SM’s other books. Sadly I enjoyed reading the sappy love story. I was, however, fed up with Bella’s whining and the whole love triangle was just a bit much.
Back to BD, there were some specific elements that I did not like: 1) I thought the change in POV was unnecessary (I’m not a big Jacob fan), 2) I didn’t like that she drew in such a large number of characters (I got confused as to which vampire was with who and from where and I didn’t really care) and 3) the climax was anti-climatic (I mean, where was the fight?)
Thanks for your review.
I will be the first to admit that I did not find any of these books to be some amazing literary experience. For me they were just fun. I let myself get sucked in while I was on the plane, and so I just finished the series while I was at it. My husband compared how I was acting to how he acted when he was “addicted to 24″ and had to watch the show every week, but never found anything intellectually or morally stimulating about it. I had to agree with him. I think some books are meant to be read just for fun, without a whole lot of thought. They are mindless and silly, but I see no difference between reading them and watching most of what is on tv now days. I guess that’s why they are popular, people are to busy to sit down and really appreciate great literature. They’d rather just sit down and read something mindless in their spare time.
As for the sexual stuff, maybe I’m strange but I just found it kind of funny. I mean, what woman has ever had such an amazing climax her FIRST time that she didn’t notice she was being all bruised up? Give me a break! At least on my honeymoon, it wasn’t the physical pleasure but the emotional closeness that was so wonderful. But who really gets that kind of physical pleasure at first? That takes time! I found myself laughing all the way through reading about their honeymoon. I think that Stephenie Meyer may have been trying to portray that emotion, but it was too connected to the physical. I guess that I do hope young girls don’t read this and think that the great part is the physical pleasure when the best part is saving yourself and experiencing the beautiful, emotional connection after you’ve given yourselves to each other both legally and physically.
elise, i have to say, maybe it’s the pregnancy, or i have a libido as active as a rock, but there was nothing about this book that i found titillating in the least. too bad, really.
and tiff, do you mean to say that your husband did not completely destroy your marriage bed in his ecstasy? and that you were so caught up in your own, ahem, whatever that you didn’t even notice?
maybe every teen should be given a complimentary copy of “the act of marriage” with any purchase of a twilight series book. (or have to spend the evening with a rambunctious toddler as part of a reality check.)
i don’t know about you, but i totally woke up the next morning in total physical ecstasy. yeah right. i think the toddler idea is fantastic. can you say reality check?