Twilight

Of course I’ve seen the movie so in some sense the book itself is spoiled, I want to read book 2 in the series before it comes out on DVD. What’s interesting is to read the descriptions of the characters and see who the producers came up with to play them in the motion picture version. As I’ve said before, I’ve actually been to Forks and Port Angeles so I have a sense of place for the locale.

The book evokes perfectly the teenage girl’s sense of awakening sexuality and pre-occupation with boys. With all those raging hormones and emotional upsets concentrating on anything else must be difficult. Bella’s lack of physical co-ordination inherited from her father, the police chief, is a source of embarrassment and humiliation.

What makes a male arrestingly handsome? Anthropologists have determined that the combination of features so perceived is rather average in nature but there has to be more than physical beauty to rivet attention. Call it charisma, the inner soul, or a person’s aura but somehow some people just seem to have ‘it’. The vampire aspect of the novel is as much a metaphor for teenage angst and danger here as it was in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Bella’s relationship with her Father who happens to be chief of police of a small town is a unique one. In many senses she Mothered her own divorced Mother being in many ways the more mature of the two. When she comes to Forks she assumes a similar relationship with her Father taking over the management of his household, cooking his meals and doing his shopping. The two do not have a close physical relationship as father and daughter and do not vocalize their feelings for one another. In fact they spend much of their days never seeing one another. But she arrives to find Charlie has a truck already available for her use and when there’s an ice storm she drives to school discovering that before he left for work her father put chains on her tires.

Great literature this may not be but it is very effective in evoking the experience and feelings of a female teen in a small town.