New Moon is not off to the most stellar start.
It starts off with Bella angsting about her birthday, because it's one year closer to being old and Edward still won't turn her into a vampire. Life is hard, isn't it? They're both totally unreasonable and selfish about that whole vampire thing--Bella is willing to completely abandon everyone else in her life who cares about her for Edward, because apparently his is the only affection that actually matters; and Edward doesn't want her to be doomed to a soulless life, but still selfishly claims her as his own in every other way and won't give her a chance to move on even though they have no future together if he sticks with his no-biting rule. It's all just dumb.
But I digress. The Cullens throw a birthday party for Bella at their house; everyone is there, even spiteful Rosalie, the real token catty blond who's had maybe one line in the entirety of the series thus far. Bella gets a paper cut while opening a present, which wells with a generous drop of blood that sends Jasper (my favorite--the Absent Cullen, I like to call him) into a frenzy, as he's been on the "No Human" diet for less time than any of them and has trouble on the best of days. Edward protects Bella by slamming her into a glass vase and getting her cut up more. So everything's a bloody mess and the party is ruined. But hey, stuff happens when you hang out with vampires, you know?
Apparently Edward doesn't. Smeyer spends almost an entire agonizing chapter simply spelling out "Edward is distant and Bella is worried." I don't know if there's a right way of dragging out a situation like that into an entire chapter--probably there is--but Smeyer definitely didn't find it. I found myself literally groaning as I got to the next paragraph and read: "School followed the silent, frustrating, terrifying pattern of the last two days." The last two days that she detailed copiously...Anyway, we're finally granted some relief when Edward takes her for a short walk at the end of the chapter, says he's tired of pretending to be human for her (yeah Edward, we're all buying that reason), and that she'll never see him again.
Bella falls into a despairing stupor, and is found that way around midnight-to-early-morning by a search party her dad organized. Good gravy.
The whole situation is entirely ridiculous. I suppose I should feel some sort "Aw, Edward!" that he's nobly sacrificing his own feelings to protect Bella--but I can't over the feeling of "It's a little late for that, now isn't it Edward?" If he was going to do that, he should have left her alone in the first book, before she fell hopelessly in love with him. And Bella literally cannot function without Edward--he breaks it off in September, the entire family disappears, and then there's a huge time skip to January and she's still a lifeless zombie. There's another agonizing half-chapter detailing just how miserable she is without Edward. And Smeyer does not write short chapters. It's upsetting. The beginning of chapter four consists almost entirely of "We were working on Animal Farm, an easy subject matter. I didn't mind communism; it was a welcome change from the exhausting romances that made up most of the curriculum." and "In the last several months, I'd spent ten times the amount of time on Calculus than I'd ever spent on math before." Basically, "As with every single other day these past four months, life was dreary today."
She's not friends with Jessica anymore because she just ignores everybody, and the only person who talks to her is Mike the Retriever because I guess he's just a way nicer friend than she deserves. She is devoid of life without Edward. It's truly pathetic.
And to round off the whole experience thus far, chapter four ends with an interesting climax wherein Bella approaches four men outside a bar while on an outing with Jessica at night because she thinks they might be the same guys who wanted to violate her the last time she was in town, the first time Edward saved her. Luckily for all involved it wasn't the same guys--and strangely for all involved, what stops her is she hallucinates hearing Edward's voice telling her to keep safe.
On a slightly more ridiculous note, Bella's clumsiness seems to have gone to such an extreme that she can come back from a party with a great honkin' bandage on her arm and her dad won't worry about it. Interesting.
Oh Smeyer.
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