lliira

Yes, I'm getting back to this. Until my brain starts to turn to jelly again.

The next couple pages contain a lot of Jessica-bashing. Every line referring to Jessica is Jessica-bashing. This is weirding me out. Bella hates everything and everyone, but she retains a special ire for this girl who went out of her way to make friends with Bella and who has never been anything but nice to her.

Jessica notices that Edward, alone at lunch, is staring at Bella again. Bella, of course, deserts her kind female friend for the mean douche boy. She says, "Um, I'd better go see what he wants" (87). As if he is a teacher or an older relative, and as if he'd acted like he wanted something, rather than just staring like the stalker he is.

Edward asks Bella to sit down, and she does so "automatically, watching him with caution." And I, again, wish that Meyer knew that Edward is the villain of this book. An immortal being who stalks a very young woman and tries to bring her into his twisted world...

Wait a minute. This is the story of Bram Stoker's Dracula. (The movie, not the book.) No wonder nothing about it makes sense. Bella belongs in the late 19th century.

Anyway, Bella drools over Edward ("It was hard to believe that someone so beautiful could be real") as she sits with him at the lunch table. Their conversation is as irritating as one would expect from these two characters. Edward says, "I decided as long as I was going to hell, I might as well do it thoroughly." Put that line into a mouth of an entirely different character, and it could work. Instead, I wish Edward would skip the "thoroughly" and decide instead on "fast". And there's this:

[Edward:] "I think your friends are angry at me for stealing you."
[Bella]: "They'll survive." (86-87)

More likely they'll rejoice. Why does anyone want to be near Bella, ever? Also, this gets to what I believe is the major theme of the books: no relationships matter except the one with your romantic partner. Not parents, not children, not friends, not siblings. They aren't only less important; they are completely and utterly unimportant.

Different people put emphases on different kinds of relationships. This naturally changes over time, but I think there's a personality difference at work as well. I'm oriented toward putting greater emphasis on my romantic partner. Other people put more emphasis on friends, children, self, etc. There's nothing wrong with any of these. The problem is when one overtakes your life to the extent that you stop caring about the others. But, of course, Bella doesn't care about her friends or parents or herself, so here's Edward to fill up that great big hole where her heart should be. I guess we're supposed to think it's destiny instead of pathology. Blech.

Speaking of pathology, Edward says, "I may not give you back, though." Girls are things, owned by other people, able to be "stolen". Also, Edward just told Bella he plans to cut her off from her friends. Bella's response is to gulp. I think she's supposed to be turned on rather than disgusted. Or maybe she just has gas.

This conversation is terribly dull. It's supposed to be sexy, with Edward all, "I can't resist you any more" and Bella all confused at his mysteriousness. The "I can't resist you any more" thing is something that's usually guaranteed to hook me both romantically and sexually. But Meyer has missed both my heart and my gonads. I think maybe she hit my liver, because I'm feeling jaundiced.

Edward smiles five times in two pages, and grins once. And the font in this book is huge.

Yet again, Edward implies that he thinks Bella is unintelligent. This makes this relationship gross all by itself, even without all the other gross things.

Bella finally snaps at Edward for his obnoxious behavior -- only a little of it, like saving her life then treating her like a pariah -- and he replies, "you've got a bit of a temper, don't you?" (90) And I wonder why Bella doesn't pour her lemonade on his head.

Edward basically holds up a neon sign that blinks I CAN READ MINDS (but Bella doesn't get it), says he can't read Bella, and of course the easy joke is he can't because Bella doesn't have one. I think it's that her mind is solely a seething, tortured mass of hatred, and Edward subconsciously realizes that tiptoeing through it would poison him. And isn't our hero wonderful? Prying into teenagers' minds without their consent, then snickering over what they're thinking. Twice, on page 90. He's easily amused for an immortal monster.

So Edward notices that Bella's not eating, and she tells us, "I didn't mention that my stomach was already full -- of butterflies" (91).

This is the first time I can remember telling a book to shut up.