New Moon - Notes

[bookgazing]

I’m afraid your regular, hopefully more sensible blogger is going to desert you today to be replaced by someone speaking in the language of ‘New Moon’. I’ve seen the film, I’ve read the stellar lol cats parody and I’m about 300 pages into the second book in the ‘Twilight’ series, so I think it’s about time to discuss this subject in a way that won’t make a lot of sense to people who haven’t got sucked into sampling sparkly vamps. It’s also time for bullet points because, like the one sentence paragraphs of Bella’s tortured thought process, bullet points convey the extreme urgency of my ideas:


* Everyone I know says this is their least favourite book (probably because it takes 250 pages before the plot action starts to emerge) but so far I much prefer it to ‘Twilight’, mostly because Bella has real, live female friends in this book. While obviously she’s most distressed that her doomed lover is leaving her, she is also pretty sad that Alice is going away. She superficially reconnects with Angela and although I would have liked to see a more substantial development of this friendship, New Moon offers hope that Bella may have friend potential.

* Bella and Jacob are genuine friends in this book. I know their whole relationship starts out as a way for her to use Jacob, which he goes along with because he is romantically interested in her, but along the way their fun and easy friendship becomes the most engaging thing in the book. The off the wall ‘I will try to harm myself to have mad crazy hallucinations of you doomed lover’ is, y’know it’s not good, but along the way it seems to blossom into a genuine fr3ds 4 lif bonding exercise with Jacob. He is there for her at the worst and possibly most dangerous time of her young life (um hello psycho vampire lady wants to kill her and where is Edward the awesomely strong vampire – oh right staying away from her for her own good). If this was a chick-lit novel I’d be yawning at the predictability of the buffed up best friend whose kind attentions create a love that grows strong and true. But this is gothic romance so instead Meyer gives me the strong and truly accepting friendship, without the inevitable romance, which has it’s up and down side. I’ve seen tons of Bella backlash about how she is leading Jake on by remaining so selfishly close to him, but I think she has quite clearly told him several times, using words, that she does not love him like that and never will. It’s really not her duty to cut all ties with her best friend because he has selective hearing.

Edit: I read on a little bit before actually putting this up and I may have to revise my opinion about this being a genuine friendship because really ‘ “Bye Bella,”... “I really hope you don’t die.” ’ - what is that? That is neither supportive, nor friendly, it is just jealous jackassery. And while it’s ok for Bella to weaken and fool herself about maybe making a life with Jake, though we’re all aware she can never fully commit to him, if she’d actually done anything about it I would have thrown this book to the floor, because that would have been mean.

* The fact that Bella is almost becoming an actual person instead of a falling down handmaiden of vampire lust is making me ignore the extent of the bad writing. While I’ve still snorted uncontrollably about thirty times, I’ve probably only rolled my eyes at the stupidity of it all about five times. That is a tiny percentage compared with the eye rollage that took place during ‘Twilight’. I found the pages that indicated that she had been in a zombie like depression for months stupidly funny: how to reach your page count 101 – put one word on each page. I still think the film version of this should have been set to the song ‘In My Room’.

* There is minimal Edward in this one. Yes I know, I get that they are meant to be together because it is fate, and gothic romance, plus sparkly eye lurve equals eternal soul mates, but I immensely dislike book Edward. I’ve said before that Edward is a product of the Rochester effect, where a guy you would never let your friends date (I do not have any friends who wish to be involved in a bigamous marriage) is somehow unbelievable gothicly attractive in fiction. Unfortunately there is no feminist ending coming for Bella as far as I know so even ‘sometimes I pretend to be a gypsy’ Edward Rochester beats out book Edward Cullen. Film Edward I love, partly because he seems to have a real sense of humour instead of a condescending habit of laughing at Bella’s naiveté (and yes also because his hair is so dreamy). The ‘Bella you are tempting me to sleep with you, please STOP IT!’ message seemed to get very much swept under the carpet in the film (good call) but of course it is still there in the book, which makes me dislike book Edward even more, because this message is oh so wrong.

* There is still quite a bit wrong with this book ranging from the small, yet very annoying throw away statements like ‘But she’s just a girl’ to the very awful werewolf domestic abuse. Yes I stick by the idea that that is a portrayal of domestic abuse because the incident is described as a man getting angry and a woman getting in his way, which results in lasting scars. Now Bella not only has to be careful to avoid ‘exciting’ her vampire love, she also has to be careful not to anger her werewolf best friend, because they have no control over themselves apparently, especially when it comes to Bella. There’s also the extremely unimaginative racial descriptions, ‘almond shaped eyes’ does anyone really have almond shaped eyes? If you’re going to include Native American characters you really need to try harder.

* Hells, Bells! Honestly why does no one say this in the book? I can’t decide whether I prefer film Bella or book Bella. Others have mentioned that they prefer film Bella because you can’t hear all of her constant self doubt and she’s not always feeling guilty about forgetting to feed her dad (personally every time Bella makes something in the book I grow afraid that she will trip and burn herself, but her clumsiness does not seem to get in the way of her gender given cooking duties). Film Bella convinced me that I was wrong in thinking that you could have too many plaid shirts and after seeing the film I bought three more and a shirt dress, so maybe that is a good enough reason for me to pick her.

Unless something stupendous happens in the last 200 pages this is the last you’ll hear from me on ‘New Moon’. I plan on wrapping it up before the end of Seriespalooza, which has kept me on track for returning this borrowed book to my friend before Christmas. Thanks to Michelle at Galleysmith for hosting this event and for introducing me to a couple of interesting looking series.

I want to leave you with a related quote of the day from cleolinda who has written in my opinion the funnest ‘Twilight’ and ‘New Moon’ parodies around, handed them out for free and then gone on to write more funny, well thought out posts about romance and work and life:

‘I hate saying "I want a man around to take care of me," because it's not like that--it's like, sometimes I want to ride in from the battlefield and be sheltered and patched up and refreshed every once in a while, and then go riding back out to finish fighting my own battles. And I would do the same for whoever I was with.’

Is this not what we all want?