Twilight: a Comparison

Okay, so it may seem a little late to review a book that was first published in 2005, but I was swept up by all the anticipation for Breaking Dawn, the last in the Twilight series and I figured I’d give the series about teenage vampire love a try. The last time I did something like this was in the months preceding the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Though I had never actually read a single Potter book, I was caught up in the buzz (uproar might be a better word) that was ringing in the months before July 2007 and I wanted in on the fun. And so I read the entire series and was pleasantly surprised by what I discovered therein. Sure enough, I was in line at 11:30 on July 20, waiting excitedly amongst the crowd, and although I wasn’t sporting a robe and a wand, and hadn’t penciled in a lightning-bolt scar on my forehead, I had become a Potter convert. The same cannot be said about the Twilight novel.

Although they stem from completely separate universes, and share very little of the same audience (Twilight’s feet are planted firmly in what is pejoratively known as ‘chic-lit,’) much has been made about the similarities of these books. A recent “Entertainment Weekly” article on the Twilight series referenced J.K. Rowling and her Harry Potter universe no less than a dozen times. Because of the frantic sales of the Twilight series (over 50 million copies sold worldwide), people have appointed Twilight author Stephenie Meyer the ‘next J.K. Rowling.’ Nothing could be further from the truth.

As I’ve hinted, the intended Twilight audience is decidedly female. I had a friendly, somewhat embarrassing conversation with the sales lady at Barnes & Noble about how much my sister/mom/girlfriend is going to love the book I was buying for her. “Um, it’s for me,” I sheepishly declared. She hesitated. “Oh that’s okay. I’ve been trying to get my husband to read this too!” But while the terminology of ‘chic-lit’ may be derogatory, I think the insult here lies not with Twilight, but rather with ‘chicks.’ That is to say, the chic-lit moniker does not debase the book, but to label this book in such a way, debases the chic-lit moniker itself. This book is atrocious.
I approached it with an open mind, excited to be pulled into a new universe with new and exciting characters. But while Harry, Ron and Hermione have become flesh-and-bone people to me, the characters in Twilight are as flat and limp as the acid-free bond paper they’re printed on. Harry is a great (though imperfect) protagonist: conflicted, full of emotion, yet rooted in a strong sense of morality (he rarely lies, and is intensely loyal). Myer’s Isabella Swan, on the other hand, besides having a subtle-as-a-freight-train moniker, is flat and uninteresting. She’s deceptive, but not in an interesting, literary way. More in the way you wouldn’t want your teenage daughters to behave. Her would-be lover, vampire Edward Cullen, is instantly smitten with her ‘fascinating’ personality. Personally, I find the lint in my bellybutton to be much more interesting.

The writing itself is vague and uninspired, reminding me of the journals I kept in my pre-teen years. In fact, that may have been Myer’s master stroke here. Setting the book up with a first-person narrative, when your narrator is an immature teenager, and your writing style is painfully sophomoric—it’s a match made in heaven. But from a reader’s point of view, it’s like drinking a light American beer with too much head: all froth and no taste. While Rowling adeptly takes you from scene to scene with seamless transitions and chapter endings that make you want to turn the page and keep right on reading, Myer clumsily spools out narrative like a first draft English paper: choppy and full of stuffing. Rowling will advance a scene and reveal much about her characters in just a few lines of dialogue, while several chapters in Twilight can go by and the reader will wonder, what was the point in all that?

I’m not saying Rowling is the perfect author, either. She can often oversimplify the emotion of a moment, and has a recognized fondness for adverbs. But Rowling’s sins as an author have been Xeroxed and magnified 150% in Stephenie Meyer’s writing. Unconvincing teenage over-emotion: check. Excessive use of adverbs: check check.
I’m a strong opponent of praise for praise’s sake; success for the sake of success, such as Dan Brown’s steamy-pile-of-Mona-Lisa-extrement, The Da Vinci Code. Even the writing in Harry Potter, does not deserve the accolades it commands worldwide. But if Potter is a B+ book getting A++++ treatment, Twilight is a D- book getting A++ treatment. And that just doesn’t seem right.