'New Moon' follows on directly from the end of 'Twilight'. Bella and Edward are together and in love, which Meyer clumsily reminds us of through a whole laundry list of badly conceived 'Romeo and Juliet' allusions. Bella is studying 'Romeo and Juliet' at school. Bella and Edward are watching 'Romeo and Juliet' on DVD. Edward thinks Romeo is a fool. Both wonder if suicide is the only option for a bereaved lover. When people talk about hating the 'Twilight' saga for its schmaltz, passages like this are what make you understand their point of view. Of course, all this sledgehammer foreshadowing is leading somewhere, and when Bella accidentally cuts herself at the Cullen house and puts herself in danger due to Jasper's lower tolerance for the smell of human blood, Edward decides it would be better for Bella if he and his "family" left. In order to achieve this, Edward rather brutally tells her that he does not love her. Bella collapses in the woods in a trance of grief, and so begins Bella's love coma, where nothing is real for her and nothing matters to her. She walks, she talks, but she, to paraphrase 'American Psycho' is simply...not...there. Meyer actually employs an interesting structural device here by having empty chapters with the names of months heading them in order to show Bella's desensitised state. It is only when her father tells her that he is going to send her back to her mother that Bella seeks company to throw him off the scent. Enter her Native American pal Jacob Black, who Bella commissions to repair some motorcycles she found, in order to give her the kind of adrenaline rush she needs to hear Edward in her head...
It's only at this point, for me, where this book moves from bearable to page-turning. In 'Twilight', it was heavily hinted at that the Quileute tribe of Native Americans have a past with the "cold ones" and a link to wolves. Here, Meyer does a great job of revealing that Jacob's friends and then Jacob himself are in fact werewolves mystically created to fight vampires and defend Quileute lands. In establishing the bond of friendship between Bella and Jacob, Meyer creates one of the most famed love triangles in existence. Jacob falls for Bella, but Bella is obsessed still by Edward. And sooner rather than later, she will have to save his life...
'New Moon' does a good job of advancing the plot of the overall saga, but the structure of the book is unsatisfying, with the first third being Bella's misery under the microscope, the second third being the werewolf plot and the final third being the adventure in Italy saving Edward...with each of those sections having a great deal of unnecessary filler that Meyer would've been better off editing out, particularly the endless domestic or travelling sections (how many times do we need to hear about Bella preparing food for Charlie? Do we need an entire account of Alice and Bella's plane journey?). The dialogue is, at times, excruciating, and the worn out James Dean-isms spouted by Edward and Jacob quickly get tiresome. One interesting thing about the book, however, is that the primary hero- Edward Cullen- and the primary antagonist- the evil vampire Victoria- are off screen for the majority of the book. This is a brave decision on Meyer's part, and I think that it works well, because it gives her the space to establish Jacob as a major player.
If you look at 'New Moon' as one section of one giant book, it does what it should, but read in isolation, its flaws are probably greater than its achievements, despite the fact that the werewolf storyline made me want to pump my fist in the air with joy (everyone knows werewolves are cool). However, I think it is important to look at 'New Moon' in its overall context...which is to set up the edge of the seat cataclysms about to strike in 'Eclipse' and 'Breaking Dawn'.
No comments:
Post a Comment