Chapter Two

Sorry it’s taken me so long to post chapter two…truth be told I’m having a hard time with this project. Not because I’m hating the book so much, but rather because it’s just really, really boring.  But, I promised I would read it and blog about it, so here goes.  Chapter two.

Bella’s next day at school is better in the sense that she is starting to make friends and develop a routine, but worse because she has to play volleyball in gym and because Edward is not in school.  I can actually relate to this.  I too was terrible at sports and absolutely hated gym class, and especially volleyball.  So Bella has my sympathies here.  I can also understand her disappointment at not seeing Edward.  After the bizarre hatred he showed her on day one, she finds herself wanting to confront him to demand what his problem is.  This kind of anticipation can really build up adrenaline, and without a release the sense of disappointment can be a bit crushing.  I’ve felt that before, so points for relatability.  

After school she goes to the grocery store, and this I find weird.  She states that grocery shopping was something she did at home, so the familiarity of it was reassuring.  Um…why doesn’t her mom do the shopping?  Bella is a teenager.  When I was a teenager my mom still did all the shopping.  Is Bella’s mother an invalid?  Why isn’t she responsible enough to be the adult in their relationship?

Bella then checks her email to find three increasingly worried emails from her mother since Bella hadn’t bothered to contact her yet.  Bella just kind of snottily responds that she was waiting to write until there was something to write about.  Wait a second…arriving safely at your new home isn’t worth writing about?  What is wrong with this girl?

Pages of nothing important later (seriously – this chapter is boring as hell because NOTHING is happening) Bella is in Biology class again and Edward has deigned to show up after being absent for a week.  And he’s being perfectly friendly to Bella, leaving her extremely confused.  As much as I want to just hate on this, in all fairness I can’t.  Teenage boys are awkward (and since we don't yet know that he's actually over a hundred we have to accept at face value that he is in fact a teenager).  Teenage girls are awkward too. It’s possible that his behavior the prior week was motivated by external factors that had nothing to do with Bella and her reaction of fear was overblown.  We don’t know.  But confusion is something of a standard MO for high school students, so again, points for at least quasi-realism.

The two show off for each other in class, trying to outdo each other in identifying the stages of mitosis. The painstaking details of such mundane activities are what makes this such a boring read. I hated biology in high school and was glad to leave it behind me. I really don’t need to read about it in a romance novel.  

Ooh, but finally it looks like we’re getting an explanation for why Bella has come to Forks.  My ebook version is 235 pages long, and this explanation is coming on page 24, well behind the scintillating descriptions of going to class, grocery shopping, and snotty commentary about her parents, her home, and her fellow classmates.  I’m sorry, but that’s basic plot failure.  Anyway, we learn that Bella moved because her mother got remarried and wanted to travel with her baseball player husband.  Bella willingly exiled herself to Forks to allow her mother that freedom.  But what I don’t get is that Bella has made it clear by this point that her mother is basically a large child who is completely incapable of taking care of herself and that Bella was the parent of the relationship.  So why didn’t Bella sue for emancipation and remain in Phoenix by herself?  She apparently was already living that way anyway.  Why bother going to live with another incapable parent (because she’s also made it clear that Charlie is just about as helpless as Renee despite being the chief of police and supporting himself for fifteen years.)  

Class ends (because this explanation happened during class because they finished their lab so much faster than everyone else in class so they had time to just chat), Edward exits “swiftly and gracefully,” Bella is a snot to Mike, and she gets in her truck to go home.

I’m really sorry this post isn’t more insightful.  I’m actually feeling a little surprised. I came into this not liking the books because I believed they were anti-feminist and sent dangerous messages to young girls.  I hoped that reading them would either prove me wrong or at least provide me real justification for my dislike. But so far neither has happened.  Right now all I feel is bored.  Well, bored and annoyed. I still don’t like Bella's attitude and think she’s a whiny and ungrateful brat.  But beyond that, nothing of real importance happened in this chapter, or in the previous one.  The published book is 544 pages and already I feel confident in saying that it could easily lose a good 200 of them and still have a story.  The first Harry Potter book is only 309 pages and packs a good, entertaining story.  Surely Meyer could have done something similar with 344 pages.  

I really can’t understand why her editor didn’t tell her to cut out huge swaths of mundane writing and I also can’t figure out why so many people are so gaga over these books.  I’ve heard them compared to Harlequin romances, which is not necessarily a bad thing because I think those have their niche, but I have to disagree on principle.  I’ve read some Harlequins, and even enjoyed them.  They are very short, compact, and follow a pretty strict formula.  If you’ve read one, you’ve read them all.  Twilight is not like that.  Twilight is extremely long, rambling, and there’s still no recognizable plot.  Where is this story going?  We still have no clue.