Thoughts on NEW MOON by Stephenie Meyer

After seeing Twilight (the movie) on TV, I felt the need to bleach Kristen Stewart's quote-unquote acting from my mind, but I've already read Twilight (the book) three times. So decided to reread New Moon, instead. Bonus: my mom bought me the new edition after I casually mentioned one or six times how incredibly hot Taylor Lautner looked and how I would buy it just for the cover art ALONE! Exclamation mark! Look at him, all muscly and tanned and protecting Bella from the man-with-too-much-eye-make-up-in-the-moon. I think my favorite part of this cover, though, are Jacob's fellow tribesmen looking like they're climbing out of the primordial ooze, protozoic beings not yet evolved into humans. Subtle as always, Hollywood!

To be honest, I never planned on rereading this book, because it's a little hard to take. If any of you have suffered from depression, Bella's reaction to Edward leaving is all too easy to relate to, and I don't think the payoff is that satisfying. There are moments in this novel when it's absolutely impossible not to hate Edward, who not only leaves but takes away Bella's family and the entire future she's dreamed for herself. It takes most of Eclipse for Edward to fully redeem himself for that. Despite that and the fact that it's way too long, however, the novel ends up working. After rereading it, I can see that Meyer put a certain amount of literary ambition into this one.

Once upon a time, there was a young girl who lived at the edge of a great forest...
Like many romances, these books are based on fairy tales. But if Twilight was based on Cinderella--complete with a ball at the end--then New Moon is based on Sleeping Beauty. Bella says several times that she's asleep, and the course of the novel is about her waking up. At first glance, one might assume that Jacob is the prince who wakes her up--but he's not. Bella wakes up before she sees Jacob, when she goes to Port Angeles with Jessica and hallucinates Edward's voice for the first time. "...whether it was the zombies, the adrenaline, or the hallucinations that were responsible--it had woken me up," she says.

That sentence is significant because while Edward is still the fairy tale prince, just as he was in Twilight, he's not the one who saves Bella. She knows she's hallucinating when she sees him and that his voice is only in her own mind. It's actually Bella who wakes herself up--she's the one who decides to buy the motorcycles, she's the one who asks Jacob to fix them, and she's the one establishing the rules of their relationship. She makes the conscious decision to reestablish connections with her friends and family and not go back to the numb sleep-walking state she was in before.

She's also the one who saves the prince at the end of the story, not vice versa. So while New Moon is based on a fairy tale, it also turns the conventions of that fairy tale around. Bella's the hero of her own story, not Jacob or Edward.

Jacob Black: Convenient Plot Device
Speaking of Jacob, you've got to feel for the guy. In Twilight he was a convenient plot device used to clue Bella into the fact that the Cullens were vampires; and in the rest of the series (which, let's face it, is really just the first book re-written with a love triangle and werewolves) he basically serves to help Bella find dangerous things to do, rebel against Edward, and keep Renesme from being eaten by the Pack. But on the plus side, at least he's a convenient plot device with a personality.

I know there are a lot of people who are Team Jacob, especially after New Moon (the movie), which is understandable. But really there was no way he and Bella were ever going to wind up together. I take that back--there might have been a chance if he'd stayed human. But as soon as he turned into a werewolf there wasn't, and I would go further to say that's probably a good thing. As Bella says, "He was not my Jacob," the one she knew before he became a werewolf. The human Jacob had a crush; the werewolf Jacob is closer to obsessed. And Bella only 'needs' him because he keeps the yawning nothingness away, so she's essentially using him. That's not the greatest basis for a relationship.

Past Hope, Past Cure, Past Help
There are a lot of references to Romeo & Juliet in this novel, which I think is quite effective. Not because it feeds into the whole star-crossed lovers thing (since the books have a happy ending that's not very convincing), but because thematically Romeo & Juliet really informs what's going on in this novel.

What was Romeo's and Juliet's major downfall (aside from the fact that they were impatient and overdramatic teenagers with no life experience)? They had no faith in themselves and the people around them, and lost hope that the situation would end favorably. Admittedly, it is pretty difficult to maintain hope when your wife's lying in a coffin, but still. If Romeo had kept his faith in Juliet, then a lot of the things that led to the tragic ending would have been avoided.

Edward and Bella have pretty much the same problem. Edward has very little faith or hope for himself, which is why he leaves at the beginning of the novel. What he does have is destroyed when he hears that Bella killed herself. Bella likewise had little faith that Edward loved her as much as she did him; but it's because Bella allowed her hope to survive--pursued it, in fact, in the form of her hallucinations--that things worked out. During the brief moments when she considers "acting like a grown-up" and being with Jacob, she's really considering giving up hope. It's not Edward that haunts her nightmares but a world without hope.

1 Corinthians 13:13 is one of my favorite quotes ever: "For there are these three things that endure: Faith, Hope and Love; but the greatest of these is Love." Love may be the greatest, but I've always personally believe faith was the most important--because without faith, love can't survive. Meyer seems to be arguing something similar in this book: that hope is the most important, because without hope nothing can endure, not love and certainly not the people who are searching for it.


Although I know there's some controversy regarding Bella's independence, or lack thereof, in New Moon, on the second read I found her to be much stronger than I expected. She fights back against the existential nothingness and chooses to create meaning out of her shell of a life. I would never go so far as to say New Moon is empowering, but I do think the novel makes an argument for the power of faith, hope, love, and never giving up on your dreams, which to me seems a pretty positive message.


Musical notes: "Where is My Mind" by The Pixies

THE HYPNOTIST by MJ Rose

Synopsotist:

FBI Art Crime agent Lucien Glass is trying to crack down on Malachi, who specializes in past life regression (this plot is continued from the previous books in the series, which I haven't read). Meanwhile, some other people want to steal a chryselephantine statue from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and so does this other person, who instead of just stealing it hatches an elaborate plot involving stolen artwork that they use to bribe the Met into surrendering the statue of Hypnos. Then there are explosions. Somehow, everything intersects.

Reasons Why You Might Enjoy This Book:

1. You like strange names. Instead of being named Richard or John or Scott, or something you would expect an FBI agent to be named, the FBI agent here is named Lucien. As if he's a brooding bad boy from a Regency romance novel. In fact, no one in this book has a normal name; even Lucien's first love is named Solange--SOLANGE, are you freaking kidding me?!?
2. You find foreigners to be suspicious. All the baddy bad guys in this novel are foreigners. In addition, an overwhelming percentage of them appear to be from the Middle East. So that's not stereotyping at all.
   
3. You have a less-than-rudimentary grasp of the law. Um, yeah, the whole thing with Lucien investigating the murder of his one twu love would totally happen. And also the thing with the hypnotism. And also being called to a scene before the local authorities.
   
4. You love it when a new character is introduced every five pages. After about the quarter mark this starts getting reeeally annoying.
5. You enjoy looking shit up. Don't know what a chryselephantine statue is? Have fun on wikipedia, kids, because the author doesn't explain it. Does she know? Does it matter?
   
6. You like Dan Brown's novels, but the writing is a little too edgy and deep for you. The way this author phrases things is SO CHEESY, I could hardly believe I was even reading it. "Taghinia smiled as he opened his humidor, extracted a Cuban, rolled it in his fingers, listened to its music, cut off the tip, and set about lighting the stinking weed." Mmmkay. "His arms ached to hold her, hold on to her and keep her with him, keep her safe."!11!! *gaggyface*

Sooo, you really want to read this book now, don't you? Yes you do, just admit it! Luckily for you, I haz a contest. Voila! It's even open internationally if you're willing to accept the book in eFormat (PDF).

Tasha's Guide to Not Reading the Dark Side

Have you ever read a book that really pissed you off just on principle?  I recently finished Jessica's Guide to Dating the Dark Side, and let me tell you--to anyone who thinks Twilight "sends the wrong message to young girls," I challenge them to read this novel and then tell me how bad they think Twilight is.

The novel itself is pretty shallow, as one can guess from the summary: "Marrying a vampire definitely doesn’t fit into Jessica Packwood’s senior year 'get-a-life' plan. But then a bizarre (and incredibly hot) new exchange student named Lucius Vladescu shows up, claiming that Jessica is a Romanian vampire princess by birth—and he’s her long-lost fiancé. Armed with newfound confidence and a copy of Growing Up Undead: A Teen Vampire’s Guide to Dating, Health, and Emotions, Jessica makes a dramatic transition from average American teenager to glam European vampire princess. But when a devious cheerleader sets her sights on
Lucius, Jess finds herself fighting to win back her wayward prince, stop a global vampire war—and save Lucius’s soul from eternal destruction."

It sounds silly but essentially harmless.  I would argue it's hardly the latter.

First, the cover:  The main character, Jessica, is a size ten.  Does the girl on the cover of this book look like a size ten to you?  As Carrie from Books And Movies pointed out, plus-sized and overweight characters are often "white-washed" off the covers of their own books.  Size ten isn't overweight by any means, but I bet it's about eight sizes larger than the model on the cover.  I found myself wondering how this connects to the book itself, where the character doesn't eat because she thinks she needs to lose some weight.  Which brings me to a second major problem with the book...

The hero, Lucius:  Putting aside how cheesy he is (which of course doesn't really bother me) and how the way he speaks can go from fresh-off-the-boat to MTV Cribs in a single sentence, the guy's an arsehole.  He judges the heroine on how she dresses and behaves, and subsequently lectures her on the correct way she should be dressing, acting, eating, etc., going so far as to actually buy her clothes for her (and was that dress really appropriate for a carnival?  Really?)  You ladies all know how attractive a lecturing male is!  Although some of his words may have been that Jess needed to accept herself, the actual message was that she needed to accept Lucius' view of herself.  Plus, he was a serious stalker.  Edward Cullen's got nothing on this guy.

Violence=Good:  Jessica's parents are tofu-eating, organic farming types who don't believe in violence.  Lucius is a vampire who solves almost every problem through violence.  The parents are repeatedly made fun of for their passive attitude toward violence.  And, when Lucius intervenes on Jessica's behalf against a bully (after her repeatedly telling him it was none of his business) by tossing him around and threatening to do more, he is painted as a hero while the "Jacob" character who did nothing is somewhat vilified for being passive. 

Marriage:  I don't have anything against marriage on principle, but would any mother in America seriously encourage her 17-year-old daughter to marry a guy she only just met and move to Europe, let alone a guy as controlling as Lucius, with the words, "You'd be surprised how often disgust turns to lust"?  Uhg, are you SERIOUS????  Don't worry sweetie, you'll want to fuck him eventually no matter how much he disgusts you!  Because it's twu lurv. *GAG GAG GAG GAG*


Other than those four things, there were inconsistencies of logic, tone, and the characters were poorly drawn and thought out.  However, I don't think I would have hated this book half so much if the above issues weren't present. 

This book is insanely dumb. I do not recommend anyone buy it.

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