I was hoping that despite the notorious gender split over the success of this book, that I, a man, would be able to enjoy this book as much as the general female population. But two chapters in, I have already well and truly given up any hope of enjoying Twilight. It's not that there's anything particularly awful about the writing or the plot, but there's an impenetrable quality to the entire experience. I can't relate to Bella, I can't engage my imagination in Bella's world. It's a very weird situation for me, and one that I've never had with any other book, even the ones I've hated.
But despite not enjoying this book, I'm still going to read it because the divisive nature of this book fascinates me. I don't think we've ever seen a work of fiction split men and women in quite this fashion. I've already come to a few conclusions about why this book is so offputting to the male reader, and funnily enough, most of them come from the fact that the book is told in the first-person, from Bella's point-of-view. It not only makes the book hard to read, it makes it very easy to misread.
First of all, Bella makes a lot of offhand observations about what she sees around her. For example, she's so terrible at sports that playing the game ends up hurting her own team, or there's a boy called Mark who follows her around so much that she imagines him with a wagging tail. If these observations were made in the third-person, like J.K. Rowling does with Harry Potter, it would be clear that they're meant to add humour to the book. But told in the first-person, they make Bella look like a sad, conceited person. It's bad enough that Bella's bad at sports, but it's sad that she goes to such lengths to avoid it and talks about it every time there's a gym class. Likewise, it sounds heartless to hear Mark constantly referred to like some poor animal who's beneath her. In the Harry Potter books, I remember Hermione Granger referred to as mousey with big teeth, but if Harry Potter was thinking that in his mind, I'd find it hard to relate to his character. The first-person viewpoint seems to place more significance on these offhand observations than I think Stephenie Meyer intended. They're not meant to stand out on the page, yet they do.
In addition to that, the offhand remarks also make it difficult to understand Bella's meaning. I remember people criticising the point that Bella has everyone at school looking at her because she's so attractive, but she ignores them. In fact, Bella says that the attention is due to her being the new girl in a very small community where everyone knows each other. This is a good example of how hard it is to understand Bella's character. She says a lot of things, but it's impossible to grasp whether these things are important to the plot or just throwaway lines of dialogue.
Aside from that jarring, Bella spends far too much time talking about the everyday aspects of her life. Her second day of school is almost identical to the first, so to keep hearing about Mark following her around the school or how she sucks at gym class or how little her dad, Charlie, can't talk to her gets very old quickly. When people talk about how Bella has no identifiable interests, I think they're just picking up on how repetitive much of the book is. Harry Potter had only one identifiable interest, Quidditch, but there was so much more exciting stuff in the book that nobody cared it got cancelled in the fourth year. With Bella, you want her to have an interest if only it gives you something different to hear her talk about. Of course, if Twilight was written in the third-person, Stephenie Meyer wouldn't be able to get away with such monotony. It would be clear that her story's pacing is too slow and padded out.
And as a quick aside, I've heard people say that Bella and Edward have no shared interests to justify their relationship. But the same could be said for Ron and Hermione, yet nobody really cared that they got together at the end of that series. In the third person, there's a lot you can get away with because the characters are complicated and have their secrets. But with Bella's thoughts and feelings being laid bare, it feels like every little thing about her reasoning should be justified somehow, even when that's impossible for Stephenie Meyer to do. In fact, when Bella explained her parents' divorce to Edward, my immediate thought was, "Why doesn't she like snow?"
I'm interested to know what the Twilight fans here make of my observations. To be fair, I could imagine this book being enjoyable if the reader was able to think along the same lines as Bella Swan. As someone with very different experiences, I can't relate to her at all. But as a positive point for the book, I thought Stephenie Meyer handled the introduction of Edward Cullen very well. At least for the moment, Edward's an interesting character because he's a mystery. He not only acts very oddly but he manages to get Bella to open up her feelings. It'll be interesting to see whether he can stay that way.
Edited by Raien, 03 September 2010 - 07:12 PM.
