"...And?"-Alice Cullen
Well, okay. So that was New Moon. Not a lot really ended up happening when all was said and done. Two incredibly inconsequential characters are dead. Jacob is a wolf, and he is mad, but he still loves Bella. The Volturi exist, but they are actually nice people; the Cullens don't like them, but they are probably not going to give our heroes any trouble for a while (read: not for at least one book) anyway. Edward has made his intentions clear: he wants to make an honest woman out of Bella. Well, okay.
It helps when you look at New Moon as a picaresque novel. If I had to lay out the episodic arcs of the book I would say they are
- Bella's birthday party->Edward and The Cullens leave
- Bella's misery-coma-> burgeoning friendship with Jacob
- Sam Uley mystery->getting to know the wolfpack
- Alice's return-> the Italy trip
- The vote and the marriage proposal
And Bella is an anti-hero if there ever was one. She's such an anti-hero that sometimes you really want her to just die and go away forever. She misleads Jacob, she misleads herself, and when she's not too busy burying herself in her own misery she's too obsessed with Edward to care that dozens of people around her are being murdered by the Volturi.
Come to think of it, New Moon itself is kind of anti-heroic. This is a book built on self-absorption, misunderstanding and willful deception. It contains startling and crass domestic abuse imagery and displays a peculiar disregard for the lives of the ordinary people not directly involved in its plot machinations. It builds to an anticlimactic climax that leads to a cowardly gesture of appalling proportions being committed by our main characters. In the denouement, Edward still clings to his arrogant and insane soul-theology and can't stop trying to convince Bella that he was more miserable than she was. (Didn't you want to jump into that conversation and tell them that we had it worst of all? We had to endure both of you!) And then he insists on getting married, for reasons passing understanding.
Is it supposed to feel like this? Are we supposed to hate Bella? Edward? If not, what is it supposed to feel like? This book progresses by way of numerous misunderstandings, some of which we seem to be intended by the author to understand. We're meant to see all of the cards, so to speak. We are supposed to know that Bella did not kill herself. But are we supposed to not know that Jacob is a werewolf? Are we supposed to think he is really killing people? It takes Bella such a long time to understand everything that it's hard to believe we are supposed to be right there with her. Give us a little credit, S. Meyer. And when I say us, I don't just mean "adults who should know better anyway." Eleven year olds are on top of these mysteries.
I didn't much enjoy reading this book; I liked Twilight a lot more. And the sloppy writing and grammatical errors that held Twilight back persist here, making them even less excusable. Bella even slips into the present tense once in this book, which is unforgivable in like, a high school creative writing class. There's also that chapter where S. Meyer copies and pastes a whole page of text from the first book into the second. Are you kidding me?
There was plenty that I liked. The blank pages after Edward leaves are great and very effective. The Volterra chapters are compelling, even if they ultimately don't pay off. Alice gets to do way more, as does Charlie. Both of them continue to be great. But this time, the bad outweighs the good.
When we finished Twilight I was cautiously optimistic. Going into Eclipse, my outlook is not so sunny. Get it, because eclipse? Sorry.
Next week: The New Moon Awards, New Moon the film, and a very special post about the fact that even though you think you want to read about Bella and Alice having sex, it turns out that you really don't.
Thanks to everyone for reading and commenting for these past three months (exactly three months, by the way). You made it endurable. You are like my wolfpack, except none of us abuse our spouses.
Previously:
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