Well since I've been reviewing practically the entire Twilight franchise and as far as I know I've never done a book review so I thought I would. I love reading books, but I find them hard to get into because to properly absorb a book takes several weeks even if I'm engrossed in it, rather than a film which can always be finished in one several hour sitting unless you intervene so as a warning this review will probably take about a month to complete so the writing will be uneven and the flow jerky as I compile my thoughts after each sitting with the book and attempt to rework it into one piece of constant writing. Plus this will have no pictures, because you know, it's a book. Enjoy!
I've actually already read this book, but it must have been what, like five years ago? If not longer so I may as well be going into this blind and treat this as a first impression (aside from the fact I've seen the films).
Upon opening the book I have to say, I was happy that I got greater fleshing than the film, it really made me see just how much of Meyer's story is filler and yet the film still managed to be pretty much entirely made up of fluff. Meyer takes time to set every scene and this soon descends into annoyance.
One of my lecturers once said a story is 'whatever needs to be told' - what he means by this is that when recounting your day, you could probably sum up the important bits in a sentence since most of your day involves sitting on Facebook and listening to illegally downloaded music. Meyer, despite having a degree in English seems to forget this entirely, she doesn't seem to find the actual important details well...important.
And yet Meyer goes into pages and pages of detail about the colour of the walls or what the potted plants look like. The first quarter of the book could have been about five pages, ten if she decided to include the details we needed. But no, she isn't quite the abomination of literature the haters claim she is, no.
For all my complaining about Meyer's waffling though, at least the book takes time to build up chemistry between Bella and Edward, there was no real reason why Bella was in love with Edward by the end of the movie because they practically removed all character moments for the sake of getting to the fact Edward was a vampire quicker. Really, this isn't exactly a bad thing but the smug but in a cheeky way Edward we get at in the book is genuinely charming and Bella's reactions are suitably natural meaning the little interactions with the two characters through the book really gave me a smile and made the transition into the L word seem a little smoother than a plane into the side of a building like the movie felt.
What did surprise me though is that what little description Meyer gives about her characters, they sound nothing like their movie counterparts. Most characters are defined completely by their skin and hair, even this she somehow makes irritating with practically every character having dark hair so 'dark haired guy' isn't so much an identifier unique to a character and instead the description used for most of the characters in the book. Instead we have to define them by 'that acne kid' 'that skinny kid' 'that pale kid' - wait no, that is still 99% of the cast, shit.
Somehow the characters appearances in the movies manage to be an even more basic version of Meyer's basic descriptions, that is a new low in shitty adaptation. What becomes more and more apparent is just how simplified the adaptation is. The famous scene of Edward saving Bella from the careening van is much more detailed in the book, making Edward seem considerably more super powered and much more heroic. It isn't like the timeline of the film is condensed (and yet feels insanely flabby) they literally cut entire moments down to their basic elements. I have absolutely no idea why, but I can't help but really love the book just for the fact the movie is feeling more and more as I read, like an abridged version of the book, a quick summary, a trailer for what the book has to offer. Hardwicke's adaptation even changed/removed the most pointless things like the importance of the Cullen's names or hairstyles, surely these are the easiest things to get right and adapt? Why change these? I can understand cutting for time but anything more than that...
I won't say something like the movie is bad just because it's a poor adaptation because a lot of the changes Hardwicke made for her film make a lot of sense considering the sheer amount of filler and pointless shit that pads out the Twilight book. At the same time though Hardwicke seems to go out of her way to change something in every scene and ultimately I feel her film misses out on what the book is really all about, to the point where the film almost feels like it's nothing to do with the book.
Meyer in her story takes time to build Bella's and Edward's relationship, I still think they jump to the L word a little quickly (but then again most teens do) but it is at least given a sense that Edward and Bella are talking for weeks before they have any actual interest in one another above 'hey, they are alright'. Hardwicke condenses days worth of time in the book into single scenes making the relationship of the two leads just kinda...happen and it just doesn't work.
Further still, I questioned throughout the first movie how the hell anyone could find Edward appealing the reason for this is, Hardwicke took out practically all of Edward's character development from the book. There are a LOT of scenes of Bella and Edward just chatting, which I guess wouldn't work that well in a film, but nonetheless these scenes actually build a sense of why Edward is worth getting hot and bothered over other than his apparent 'perfection', honestly the personality Meyer gives him, had even my stone face twitching as a smile started to form on my lips.
And you know how I also said that it was kinda weird that the Twilight vampire romance story had no fucking vampires in the movie? Yeah, Hardwicke and her writers, AGAIN cut out practically all the vampire elements from the story. There are huge subplots in the book about Bella's appealing smell to Edward and him going out of his way to try and fight all his urges to just eat her and so on, I'm pretty sure this entire subplot is mentioned in one scene in the film and then just never mentioned again. BULLSHIT. I really hope the franchise can survive long enough to get a reboot more faithful to the source material, because Hardwicke's adaptation is pure garbage.
I was honestly ready to call this book the perfect companion to the movie, elaborating and generally improving on what the movie already provided. But the more you read of the book, the more you realise just how shit Twilight the movie was. If technical limitations stayed the same, the film still wouldn't have rose to greatness but if the film had concentrated more on the fact Edward is a fucking vampire and that is kind of fucking scary and devoted the rest of the screen time to Edward's and Bella's relationship not to slow motion baseball matches the film could have been really fucking good, instead we get this mediocre, poorly made unfaithful adaptation that frankly insults the fans. We deserve better.
The key difference between book and film, is the film feels more focused. Meyer desperately tries to cram in action, romance an life while reinventing vampire lore and giving characters detailed backstories, meaning the book has a tendency to feel all over the place. Hardwicke puts key concentration on the 'now' of Twilight, the immediate relationships, the characters as they are now and the stuff she takes out she fills with giving context and backstories to characters who really need it right now, James and his coven (who just kinda pop up in the book) and this is the only way I can say the film is better than the book.
The book also seems really confused. It goes on about how perfect and beautiful the vampires are and then goes on to comment that Edward has 'unusual' hair and that all the vampires look really tired or 'recovering from a broken nose' (whatever that is meant to mean). Edward is described as lanky, Alice is described as extremely skinny with her spiking all over the place (a mess), these guys don't really sound attractive at all. Plus with her describing the male vampires as 'well dressed' and 'graceful' and 'fluid' - they sound more like homosexuals than sexy heterosexual vampires. But girls are into the whole gay look for some reason.
At least the book does still go as far to explain that at least at the beginning Bella is frightened of Edward. (something the vampires aren't at all in the films) How is that sexy? I guess that gives new context to Bella putting herself in danger to see Edward in New Moon and gives added weight to that wife beating Edward joke I made... For what it is worth though, Meyer at least makes more of a vampire love story than the movie managed. Edward's hunger for blood is much more important in the book, with Edward going on regular hunting trips to attempt to control himself around Bella. It actually leads to some quite amusing conversations.
Or in Edward's case the word 'perfect'. Isn't perfection a personal thing? We know at least one person imagined Edward as a balding beer gut clad monobrow fashioned thug in a curry stained wife beater.
So do I recommend it? Ultimately Twilight manages to be so good, it becomes practically unrecommendable. Why? If you enjoyed the film, like me, then reading this book will make sure you never enjoy the film again. Not only is the book vastly superior to the film in practically every way, Hardwicke's film doesn't really have fuck all to do with this book. It's like her version of Twilight and when you see all the changes she made, all the things she compressed into oblivion or flat out removed and ultimately just how badly she misses the point of the book, you'll never be able to enjoy the film again. As simply a fan of books though, Twilight is still pretty hard to recommend. Although Meyer's pacing definitely feels improved over the film when it comes to exploring vampire lore, the characters and relationships in all other regards it's just pure shit. The first half is so crammed with unnecessary details, it becomes practically unreadable. Then just as the book starts to get interesting with Meyer playing with vampire lore and creating characters and pairing them off and so on she suddenly throws that shit about James and his coven, it feels so rushed, so tacked on, so out of nowhere it seemed like she realised she'd wrote basically a book about nothing and assumed she had to add some kind of tension before it closed. Meyer has a good story here, she has good ideas, but it's lost because she clearly didn't have a good editor to guide her in what to take out and what to keep. So go, read this if you can put up with poor pacing and go read this if you're a fan of the movie, you'll love this. But don't ever expect to enjoy the film again.
Think About It!
-Locke
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