Okay, I must say this was a really compelling read… it’s a total page turner. It was the kind of book I was slightly embarrassed to read in public, much like anything by Maeve Binchy – not scandalous or anything, but not terribly literary, if you know what I mean. A perfect summer time-suck.
The version I had was a fat hardcover, with a large typeface and beefy margins, uncomplicated wording. It took me about four days to read it – if I’d had childcare, I would have sucked it down in two.
To me, the main theme of this novel is desire, which I suppose is always a bit juicy. I’ve never been one to enjoy the Harlequin-style romance novels (except for in my formative reading years, when after a leisurely day of swimming, my sister and I would peruse the shelves of the rec room at the club our family belonged to… we’d just flip and scan the pages, looking for the semi-sordid dirty parts. I like to think everyone did – but I digress) but Twilight doesn’t seem to fit that genre.
“I was glad to leave behind the shrink-and-duck feeling that came with having this book under my arm”
Our hero is a bright 17-year-old girl, who is mature for her age, so we’re saved from a lot of typical teenage dialog overly-peppered with likes, as ifs and duhs. Her love interest is a one hundred-year-old vampire timelessly trapped inside a very gorgeous boy her “age”. It is readable because his use language is also mature, more suited to a turn-of-the-century gentleman, than of an average man-child in the oh-ohs. He is careful to control his thirst-lust for her at every turn, but also loves her with every fibre of his non-being. There are pages and pages devoted to her swooning over him. He explains everything that goes on in his pretty little head which is all women everywhere, of any age are looking for… it’s a fairy-tale. It’s delicious. I won’t say any more about the story (I wouldn’t want to ruin it for anyone who hasn’t read it) but I think girl-people of a wide age-range would enjoy this story.
I will say that I was relieved when it was ending, only because I was glad to leave behind the shrink-and-duck feeling of having this book under my arm, and I was tired of staying up later than usual at night to read it.
AND THEN! At the very end of the book, I read the preface and first chapter of the sequel in the series called New Moon. It’s a fucking series of four books. Balls! Just as I was wondering exactly how I could possibly survive without reading the next story, the very next morning, my friend/neighbour who lent me the book in the first place sent her son over to our house to give me the next three books in the series. And then she promptly left town for most of the summer, laughing all the way… ‘coz that bitch pal-o-mine knew I’d kill her for getting me hooked, like she did by someone else. It’s like crack, I guess you could say. I’ve already taken my first hit off the sequel. Lord. I have no shame at all.
There’s a reason it’s been on the New York Times bestseller’s list… it’s not a bad read at all, really. I liked it enough. Enjoy yourself.
G.G.
