The “Twilight” Franchise

Even the candy is bad. Unforgiveable.

Every once in a while I’ll read a book and my reaction is “maybe enough books have been written and we should all just catch up on the old ones”. A good example is “Twilight”, I’ve not read the 3 follow up books and I will not. This series has been smeared all over my world for the last year, I’m not sure why, but it kept revisiting my living room until I finally gave up and read the damned thing. As I read it, one thought kept going through my mind… “really?”

This smeary campaign finally climaxed the other night when my daughter and my friend and I watched the film. Obviously it was not my choice for movie night. In their defense I probably would have chosen something like “Crumb” or “A Clockwork Orange” – I’m not really all that good at girl movie night picks. However, this movie makes me want to kill someone. “One Life to Live” has more depth and Erica Kane has more character. This is an insult to every elegant vampire that has ever been imagined.

Since I had read the book I thought that I was prepared and I thought that it might translate to film very well since it is so shallow. Wrong. I am so insulted by this story. It’s just bad from every angle and there is no boy cute enough or special effects tricky enough to save it from the banality that is seething and slithering throughout it.

Bella is obviously suicidal and just doesn’t give a shit. So it’s really cute when Edward scares the crap out of her and she actually feels something momentarily. This, I thought, was fairly clear in the book but in the film it was just flashing like a neon sign. How else to explain her utter acceptance of the dangerous situations he puts her in and his kind of icky draw for her. I don’t find anything romantic about any of this. It seems seriously D/s to me. Bella submits herself to Edward’s whims without question. She puts herself in mortal danger because he’s so good looking, I can only assume that’s the reason because he has no personality to speak of. After nothing but misadventures and stilted dialog she still has to deal with in-laws and never really gets any satisfaction from Edward.

It only serves to validate the idiotic, dramatic madness that pre-adolescents are already prone to. I think that this is incredibly irresponsible and if my daughter was 13 and we watched this together I wouldn’t know how to explain any of it other than to just call bullshit. If a man throws you up against a tree for any reason, kick him in his iridescent balls and move on. It’s all Harlequin Romance squared.

The women in A. N. Roquelaure’s trilogy are more empowered than the poor victim, Bella.

It all feels like the sick fantasies of a repressed Mormon who has been housebound for too long. And for it to be spoon fed to our girls is just wrong. The writing is bad, the characters have no depth, the story is shit and trite. Why this woman is making a living at this is questionable, the fact that she’s getting rich from it is ludicrous.

Everyone that I have talked to who likes this book and has read the series seems to feel somewhat ashamed of the fact. Everyone admits that the writing is bad (read the blogs on this) and yet there is a fascination and a need to read more. No one can explain exactly why. I can tell you why. This is absolute subversive pornography hidden under a made for TV After School Special.

Did you know that there is now a book out based on the movie? Oh, it all just makes me feel so violent.

Hate it. Really Hate it.

Just read “The Story of O”, it’s far more realistic, titilating and less insulting.

Filed under: Films, Joanne Baines, Novels, Review, Stephanie Myer, Twilight, Twilight Movie

“Housekeeping” by Marilynne Robinson

Review by Jean Goldsmith

Marilynne Robinson, author of "Housekeeping", "Gilead" and "Home"

I just finished the book  “Housekeeping”. I loved this book so much first off for her use of language, vocabulary, just the way she puts words together and describes things. She writes in a way that is understandable intellectually, but also in a way where you can actually FEEL. It’s almost like a surreal use of language, which creates a feeling in the reader that goes beyond reason.

Robinson’s use of metaphors and similes is like poetry; she has unique ways of describing things. Like on page 53: “…that she smelled dully clean, like chalk, or like a sun-warmed cat.”

The story itself was so interesting and amazing in that Ruthie and Lucille did not have a “normal” life, due to so many sad circumstances, starting with the death of their grandfather, then the older ladies coming to try to raise them, and the suicide of their mother, and finally with their Aunt Sylvie and her strange behavior and lifestyle, which was strange but not strange; it was just the way she was. There was this thread of commonality between the family members, almost like the way mental illness can be common in a family, but this “thing” seemed to be “passed on” among them by their experiences with losing family members. The amazing thing about the story was that the losses of family were never dealt with as grieving, or sorrow. It was never described as such. It was just life.

This is almost summed up for me on pg. 152 in my edition: “To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing—the world will be made whole.”

Filed under: Jean Goldsmith, Novels, book, Books, Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson, Review