"He was towing me toward his car now, pulling me by my jacket. It was all I could do to keep from falling backward. He'd probably just drag me along anyway if I did."
I think I've done a fairly good job of being as objective as possible when it comes to reading this book so far. Alright, so maybe I never planned on being that objective in the first place, but so far I've resisted the temptation to trash this thing completely; after all, I'm not in the target demographic for it, and who knows, maybe it'll get better as the pages go on. Although it hasn't been an enjoyable experience thus far, I've never had the urge to toss the novel across the room. Until chapter 5.
Bella, you're a fucking asshole. Not only are you annoyingly morose, but you suck when it comes to friendship. Just look at the way she describes her friend: "Jessica babbled on and on about her dance plans - Lauren and Angela had asked the other boys and they were all going together - completely unaware of my inattention." Then later, when she finds that Edward isn't sitting at his normal cafeteria spot: "I followed the still babbling Jessica through the line, crushed...I just wanted to sit down and sulk."
First of all, Bellsnick, you weren't inattentive, because if you were you'd have no idea what the fuck Lauren and Angela were talking about. Maybe they were discussing how to masturbate with a Playstation dual-shock controller (FYI - I've found getting shot to shit in Metalgear Solid 4 to be the best way to get that thing to shake for hours; might want to get in on some Solid Snake action). So they weren't unaware of your inattention. You were a victim of Stephanie Meyer's crappy way to get information across to the audience. Second of all: fuck you for being a shitty person to people that care about you.
So not only does she complain about her friends "babbling" (I seriously don't even know why she has friends, she seems to hate them all, the men especially), she leaves them to go have another boring, pages long back and forth conversation with Ed Grimley. The exchange is filled with Meyer's jaw-droppingly banal writing; check out this exchange: "'Aren't you hungry?' he asked, distracted. 'No.' I didn't feel like mentioning that my stomach was already full - of butterflies." I don't usually say "ugh", but "ugh."
Another annoyance is the constant need for Bella (and, obviously by extension, Meyer) to describe how drop-dead gorgeous Mr. Culligan man is. It was fine once. Maybe twice. Now it's completely obvious that the author has no other tools in her writing aresenal other than to keep repeating the same things over and over again. There are a lot of things I think about this book right now, but I know it doesn't need to be over 500 pages long. The first 100 have taught me that.
Finally, we get to the first worrisome event in the book. While this should throw up red flags for any rational thinking individual, for some reason it makes Edward even more intriguing to our retarded protagonist. After Bella practically passes out in Biology class - seems she has an aversion to blood, um Bells, dear, what do you do for 5 days out of every month, bleed bubble-tea? - Eddie Munster rescues her from the clutches of the school nurse and offers to bring her home safely. Instead of walking her gently to his car, he proceeds to do exactly what the passage that opens this post says he does. He demands that she come with him. "Oh that's so sweet, he cares about her so much!" I can see readers swoon. No. That's abusive. Ladies, if you saw one of your friends being dragged against her will to some guy's car I would hope you'd go right up and pull his hair (no matter how beautifully messy it is) and scratch the shit out of his eyes (no matter how soul-meltingly scorching they are).
The next time I offer to nut up, someone tell me to shut up.
No comments:
Post a Comment