Breaking Dawn, Stephenie Meyer, Atom,Rs 550.
Serendipity can sometimes set you on a path to eternal grace. At 16, I kept coming across Dostoevsky’s name in every book I read, and vaguely wondered. Then one day, as I went to my best friend’s house so that we could smoke various illegal substances in her room, I bumped into her journalist father’s bookshelf and one fell out and flattened itself on the floor, cover up. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I read it, and it changed my life forever.
Switch to 2008 and a more hi-tech age where bookshelves are virtual, aka Shelfari, and there was talk of something called Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, with fansites proliferating as I browsed. What caught my eye was the gorgeous cover, enticing, provocative, in my favourite colours of black and red. So I bought the book, then New Moon, then Eclipse until I reached the last in the series which has just been launched, Breaking Dawn. What is astonishing is how Meyer got the formula right from the very first book, from the suspenseful prologue and cool chapter titles on, and kept the subsequent flowering of the story at its rhythmically intoxicating pace. It’s as though she opened a vein and let the blood flow in its predetermined path, lighting up all that lay in the way. Apt perhaps, because this is a story about vampires.
It’s a teenage vampire love story, to be precise, written by a young woman who is a Mormon with three children. She also listens to Linkin Park and My Chemical Romance when she can tear herself away from her favourite alternative rock band Muse. What was she doing at 16? Discovering that “holding hands was just…wow.”
Who else could have written the Twilight saga? Bella Swan comes to the rainy town of Forks to live with her father, the town sheriff, after her mother remarries. She goes to the new school and is drawn to a group that sits separately and is noticeable not just for their otherness but their cold beauty. She falls in love with one of them, Edward of the Cullen vampire coven. It’s an extraordinary love, and not physical danger, not bloodlust, not non-vampire suitors can dim its reach. But it’s a love that dare not speak its name, at least as far as sexy details are concerned. You would think that children were immaculately conceived if you believed everything you read, but then again, there is a reason why women think cuddling after the act is more important than the act itself. Bella moves through high school, gets involved in life-threatening situations with rebel vampires, bonds ever more deeply with a werewolf clan, continues cooking for her father and keeping him away from the madness of her life, and in the end discovers that she, too, has a secret gift and it’s not just her courage to live life to the fullest.
Simple truths
Meyer can’t write to save her life, but she can tell a story. (When she shifts track, she fails spectacularly; I would advise no one to buy 2008’s The Host.) She taps into the universal consciousness that, despite everything, believes in goodness and justice for all, just like she does. The key to translating that into book gold was simply achieved by Meyer following her mother’s advice “that love is the best part of any story”. It’s no wonder that the Mills & Boon behemoth can outsell poor Dostoevsky any day. But Meyer doesn’t dumb things down for her reader. The story may be simply told, but it’s not simplistic. Vampires and werewolves, lust and love, eternity and what one does with it are woven in with characters who are real and funny, sometimes heartbreaking, always interesting. Breaking Dawn brings the ends together. Bella’s distaste for weddings doesn’t stop the inevitable from happening; we are relieved that an interlude in Eclipse where Meyer stumbled by diluting the love story is dealt with; motherhood is an unexpected yet moving motif; the vampire hordes that threaten so many lives have a final reckoning, and yes, everyone lives happily ever after. Why not?
Meyer has said that she saw Twilight as a movie before she started writing. It makes perfect sense then that the first instalment will be out in theatres this December. What serendipity again that Robert Pattinson who played Cedric in Harry Potter is Edward. Reviewers have been crying themselves hoarse comparing Meyer to Rowling. The actress who plays Bella is perfect casting. Not pretty and vacuous Alexis Bledel as fans wanted, but the much more inaccessible and darker Kristin Stewart.
Meyer has started work on Midnight Sun after Breaking Dawn, but stopped when it was leaked on the Net; for such a compulsive writer, so clearly in love with her characters, my guess is she’ll start again sooner rather than later, this parallel Twilight from Edward’s perspective.
The secret of Meyer’s success is that she might be thirtysomething, she might have truckloads of children, she might dress like a librarian, but in her heart she will always be 16. Aren’t we all?
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