Ex Libris Bitsy

[openbook booknumber=”0316160199″][rating:1.5/5]

After reading Twilight I honestly though the series could not possibly get any worse. We already had anti-feminist and misogynistic overtones, we already had a shallow and petty plot surrounding a shallow and petty character. A mammoth of a book had been built glorifying two teenage lovers utterly convinced that no one had loved as they loved before or would since. The worst is past. I didn’t think it would get better but I didn’t think it could get any worse either. I was wrong.

Warning: Contains Spoilers

I felt like I was trapped in one of those terrifying nightmares, the one where you have to run, run till your lungs burst, but you can’t make your body move fast enough… But this was no dream, and, unlike the nightmare, I wasn’t running for my life: I was racing to save something infinitely more precious. My own life meant little to me today.

In New Moon Edward decides for the both of them that he is too dangerous to be around Bella and so gets up and leaves. Bella has a complete and total nervous break down. She shuts off completely for a span of several months. She has defined herself solely through her relationship with Edward, without him she literally cannot function as a human being. This time phase is shown by simply turning pages with nothing but the name of the month on them. There is literally nothing more to write. Until Bella comes back to life and with only one main impetus powering that change, martyrdom. Her father offers to send her back to her mother and then offer to have her see “a shrink”. Instead of doing either of these things she promises to get more involved with life, knowing it is a lie. Instead of actually seeking out healing she deliberately retards any growth she might have gotten from the experience out of some sort of martyr complex. Throughout the book I wasn’t sure who she was trying to punish, Edward or herself.

This especially came home to me when she started becoming suicidal. She thinks she hears Edwards voice speaking to her and warning her not to do things when she is about to do something that might result in death. As a result she seeks out deadly and dangerous things to do, riding motorcycles, walking in seedy neighborhoods, even diving off of a cliff. She swears its not because she wants to die but that because it is the only time she can be close to Edward and hear his voice. In the end when she asks Edward about it he shrugs his shoulders at her, he had no idea what she was talking about. Bella really had entered a state of psychosis in a world where “forever love” turned out to be as temporary as teen love usually is. She couldn’t handle reality. Luckily for Bella she doesn’t ever have to face it permanently, or else this would be a really short series with a very early grave for a girl that refuses to grow up and take responsibility for herself.

The one good thing in the book was Bella’s budding friendship with Jacob. I assumed that the relationship between Edward and Bella was so unrealistic because the author could not portray a real relationship in writing. This turned out not to be true. Jacob and Bella’s relationship was built slowly through friendship, common interests and mutual faith and trust. Straight up until Jacob became a werewolf their relationship was natural, healthy and Bella actually started to heal in spite of herself and if it hadn’t been for meddling vampires might have become a woman in an equal relationship, instead of a child in a controlling one. Alas.

After Jacob becomes a werewolf things change and take a dangerous turn and, finally, the book picks up and finishes at a much faster pace than the slow and dragging beginning. By the end Edward is back and he forces Bella to sever her relationship with Jacob. You can explain it away all you like, but in the end that is exactly what happened.

And so, the ending is here, the lovers are back together, they are going to love each other “forever” as they have been saying they would since about half way through Twilight. But then, things take a turn I didn’t expect. Edward proposes marriage, and Bella turns him down. She wants love “forever” because no one has loved as she loves, no one deserves love like Edward deserves love. She wants to become immortal and love him forever. But she doesn’t want to do so as his wife. Because her parents got divorced. So marriage is icky. What a complete and total child. I told you it got worse.