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It’s vampire versus wolf when ‘New Moon’
ascends
'New Moon' novel stirs emotions, but fails to standout
The Advocate
Stephanie Meyer awoke from sizzling fantastical dream of a girl accompanied by a sparkly vampire in a beautiful meadow. Her dream was so vivid that in the midst of a hectic life of motherhood, she wrote a book. And then another.And then a third and a fourth. The result is the Twilight Series.
Who would enjoy a series of books about a whiny teenage girl (Bella Swan) desperately in love with a vampire minus fangs (Edward Cullen)? Apparently every other whiny teenage girl and their mother. It became a cultural phenomenon overnight and has been turned into two full-length feature films that have surprised the box office.
The second book, “New Moon,” starts out where Twilight left off. Bella still loves Edward with all of her soul and believes they could not survive apart. She gets a very rude awakening when after his brother (still adjusting to the “vegetarian,” or no human blood, diet of the Cullen clan) attacks her at her birthday party and Edward decides for the both of them that Bella would live a lot longer if he wasn’t around.
They had me at “Goodbye Bella.” I hate to admit it, but Meyer had me crying like a baby and feeling that heartbreaking angst right alongside Bella. It’s amazing when a book can draw you in and I found myself never wanting to put it down during those first few chapters.
People ask me what makes Meyer a good writer, and when I read “New Moon” I realized it’s that she refuses to play it safe. She didn’t just make Bella pine for her lost love, but she created an entirely new character for the book. Bella went coo-coo and became a totally different person. She keeps Bella in her head, thinking about Edward, having visions of him, rarely ever letting anything else intrude in her mind, even hunger.
“I knew this was the stupidest, most reckless thing I had done yet. The thought made me smile. The pain was already easing, as if my body knew that Edward’s voice was just seconds away.” Bella convinces herself that the reason she can see Edward in her mind is because of adrenaline. To prove it, she dives off a cliff. This behavior is too extreme for impressionable teens. Okay, your boyfriend dumped you so hey, jump off a cliff. You can have a mental breakdown and have your happily ever after in your head.
The issue of Jacob Black, Bella’s wolf/best friend, was expected because the groundwork was laid out perfectly in the first book. I didn’t think he was going to turn into an actual wolf who’s in love with a whiny teenage girl and color blind. He doesn’t see a single red flag Bella throws at him. It’s all more groundwork for the third book, “Eclipse.” Once you read that book, it will all make sense and the sad part is, you know it and it makes it really difficult to keep reading “New Moon.”
I had a hard time finishing the book and I started scanning a few chapters in the future to see if Edward ever comes back. I was having withdrawal and the book was starting to lose my interest.
Meyer anticipated this and knew I was developing a case of A.D.D. and flipping through the pages searching for my, I mean Bella’s, Edward. The book transitions back to focusing on the vampire aspect of the Jacob-Bella-Edward love triangle. It becomes what’s described as a modern day, human/vampire, Romeo and Juliet-esque type story. This is how it goes…boy saw girl commit suicide in dream…boy is torn apart…girl is saved…boy doesn’t know it…boy wants to die because he see’s no reason to live if girl is dead. Insert a clan of very, very, very…very old vampires and boy should be able to get what he wants easily. Except there’s a third and fourth book of the series so do you really think anyone dies?
I have a serious problem with the layout of this book. I understand that every story has a beginning, middle, and an end. However, this book seemed more like a placeholder. I enjoyed getting to know Jacob better than I did in “Twilight” and I also got a kick out the new vampires introduced in “New Moon.” Compared to the other three in the series, it didn’t have enough substance though. Meyer could have easily split it in half and included the first part at the end of “Twilight” and the second part in the beginning of “Eclipse.”
Overall, I enjoyed the book and it set me up perfectly to start reading “Eclipse.” Meyer sends her readers into a direction that unequivocally creates the path she intends them to go down in order to understand the last two books of the series. And I guess this generation did need a hot vampire; after all, I had Lestat (Interview with a Vampire, by Anne Rice).
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