Meyer, S. (2015). Life and death: Twilight reimagined. New York, NY: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. ISBN 978-0316268394 Hardback, $13.19
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| Cover photo courtesy of Goodreads.com |
Annotation: 17-year-old Beau moves to Forks, WA to live with his dad and falls in love with a local vampire girl named Edythe.
Booktalk: When ordinary high school junior Beau moves from Phoenix to the tiny town of Forks, WA, he falls for the vegetarian vampire Edythe. Thinking she must be completely out of his league, Beau is shocked at her virulent reaction to him. Stricken with a thirst for Beau like she's never experienced before, can Edythe restrain herself long enough to get to know Beau, or will her life mean his death?
Book Review: Are you a fan of the “damsel in distress” motif? Do you appreciate a good vampire story? Do you just wonder what all the hype was about and if it’s worth it? If you were not a fan of Meyer’s original book Twlight, you may still enjoy this one. According to the author’s foreward,
“Bella has always gotten a lot of censure for getting rescued on multiple occasions, and people have complained about her being a typical damsel in distress. My answer to that has always been that Bella is a human in distress, a normal human being surrounded on all sides by people who are basically superheroes and supervillains. ... I’ve always maintained that it would have made no difference if the human were male and the vampire female – it’s still the same story. Gender and species aside, Twilight has always been a story about the magic and obsession and frenzy of first love.”Meyer’s exercise in role reversal turns out to be an interesting one. Just by their very nature, Beau and Bella are different and being inside Beau’s head was actually much more pleasant for me than being inside Bella’s. Beau, while still having most of the same self-esteem issues and hang-ups as Bella, is somehow not as pathetic. He comes across as less obsessive, but he’s also not nearly as friendly toward others as Bella is. Of course, we had four books to get to know Bella and watch her struggle and we only get one for Beau. Still, Beau is less moody and depressive and has a lot more fun one-liners than Bella ever did. He seems to take himself less seriously, to take life less seriously.
On the other hand, Edythe is not nearly as interesting as Edward. Her backstory is the same so perhaps she’s less interesting because we already know her? Edythe is more fun and less angry than Edward and she doesn’t seem to have the same level of self-loathing. She has the same protective instincts, but they come off slightly less controlling and domineering somehow. (I find myself questioning my own interpretation here).
Which brings me to my main point: reading this book was an interesting exercise in exploring my own subconscious sexist attitudes. I think a case could be made that Meyer has some of the same attitudes I discovered in myself. For example, I was disappointed to see how the scene in Port Angeles where Bella is almost sexually assaulted was changed to be Beau being threatened by a stranger with a gun. [In the original the stranger says to Bella, “Don’t be like that, sugar,” which has sexual implications]. This made the original scene in Twilight feel like gratuitous literary rape, one in which the scene is about fear and/or violence and the only reason it becomes about rape is because there is a woman involved. (See this blog post for a more detailed explanation of what I mean).
Overall, though, I enjoyed reading this book, not because it is great writing or an amazing storyline, but because it made me think about my own attitudes. Is Edward really any more controlling than Edythe, or do I just perceive it that way? Is Beau really less obsessive than Bella, or do I see it that way because we, as a society, see women as being more prone to obsess over men than men over women? Is Beau really any less pathetic than Bella or do my subconscious preconceptions of the “damsel in distress” color my view and make her come off as more pathetic then Beau?
Life and Death was decently engaging while making me examine my own prejudices at the same time. Highbrow, life-changing literature it is not. But, it was entertaining and forced me to think – I consider those to be good things in a book.
Awards:
- This book has not won any awards.
Enjoy an in-depth [non-spoiler] video review of the book here:
See all Meyer's work (and get links to fan fiction and contests) on her website here:
Read lots of reviews and get any of her books in any format (including audiobooks and graphic novel versions) on Amazon's author page here:
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