the list of now

Introduction

I do not believe it is uncommon for the last book in a series to get mixed reviews from it’s fanbase.  In the week following the release of final Harry Potter book, there were a lot of people grieving. It was the end of an era in some ways, for many fans who would genuinely miss their favorite characters and that universe.  Others yet, were grieving for the stories they hoped for that didn’t happen or for a future of their own dreams and curiosities that was closed by what many felt was an unnecessary epilogue.  Regardless of how we all felt about that at the time, in restrospect, it appears that the fanbase is more satisfied than not with how Harry ended.

I’m thinking about this, because reading Breaking Dawn and processing it afterwards AND now, trying to write about it over a week later has evoked more conflicted than contented reactions from me.  I guess I’m trying to put my finger on exactly why and there isn’t any one unifying factor, other than my feeling that Stephenie Meyer just isn’t a very good writer.  I’ve known this all along, but I have not felt so utterly disappointed by it until reading Breaking Dawn.

NOTE: Some spoilers of the first three books ahead.  There will be greater notice of spoilers for Breaking Dawn later on.

Up until this point, I’ve argued that she is a visionary creator/storyteller that gave us characters SO compelling, that even when I didn’t like them, I cared for them.  I’ve heard it said and agreed that she tells great stories, but often writes poor sentences.  I’ve looked past her endless, tired, limited-mostly-to-two-words descriptions of the Cullens’ bodies and skin (they are  always so “cold” and/or “hard”,  and at the most descriptive “icey” and/or “granite”) and her characters.   I’ve looked past the limited and somewhat offensive gender role characterizations, because the stories are told from the point of view of a melodramatic teen girl, who whether or not is supposed to be an “old soul” thinks and speaks in classic angsty patterns and sees the world, situations and other people in very teenaged way.   The plot was appropriate and made sense within her own arc, even when it pissed me off  -i.e. Jacob forcingly kissing her and her willingness to let Edward’s borderline stalkerish and abusive tendencies slide, because she felt protected and loved -  those are realistic parts of life experience as a teenage girl (unfortunately) and in some ways, human nature.  We all have forgiven poor and even inexcusable behavior in people we have loved and often have had to learn “the hard way” not to do it again.  I also felt that, we as readers, did see some recognition of how she felt wronged in these instances and we did see some reasonable growth in Bella’s character development.  I had hope that her character would continue to mature and that the overall arc of the series would not condone or present this kind of behavior as normal or even (shudder) positive evidence of just a very deep, loving connection and protective relationship.  Unfortunately, I was wrong.

So how did I excuse all that and then feel that it went terribly wrong in Breaking Dawn? Even if I didn’t like the choices in some of the previous books, it was consistant.  Her writing sentence-to-sentence was consistantly weak, but her characters were consistantly growing and interesting to me. The overall arc expanded and I wanted to keep following it’s “road”… until Breaking Dawn, where there were SO many plot holes, such inconsistant characterizations, such terrible choices in overall consistancy and construction.  It just was too much (in so many ways) -but mostly in mess.  This book created a mess out of Bella, Edward and Jacob’s arcs and then resolved all the messes in convenient and shallow ways.

I didn’t hate it.  I still cared for the characters, I still felt compelled to finish their journeys with them and I still pulled for Stephenie to learn some new descriptive words and phrases along the way.  I sincerely loved certain scenes and moments, but in the end, they were not enough.   I will not be recommending this book to people, the way the absolute fire of the first book moved me to.   And overall, I have to say, I think Meyer has some seriously fucked up gender role hang-ups and some were presented appropriately in the books (in that they fit with the characters) and some felt utterly forced on her characters and readers.  That doesn’t make them bad books – I can have distaste for an author and still enjoy their writing.  At times, I’ve even disliked characters and find it painful to read a book -The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen is a good example of this – and yet come away with profound respect for the quality of the writing exhibited.

The Bottom Line: I was disappointed by Breaking Dawn and lost a bit of respect for Stephenie Meyer, due to some overall impressions of the way she handled gender roles, pregnancy and relationship dynamics, considering her audience is largely comprised of girls between the ages of 11 – 17.

THE LIST —-SPOILERS AHOY—-

What I liked: (with some caveats and mixed feelings, of course)

• Bella gets to become a vampire and finally gets some self-esteem and confidence. The experience is empowering for her character and we, as readers, were not cheated out of seeing the transformation and her “newborn” days.  Although, I wish her new-found confidence had more to do with her strength and grace, and was less focused on her appearance (entirely too much of her self-worth has consistently been tied up in comparing her looks to everyone around her and I was hoping to see a maturing beyond this in the final book, not confirmation of it).   She only gets to feel pretty when Alice plays makeover and she doesn’t recognize herself in the mirror and when she becomes a vampire and physically transforms beyond recognition?  Seriously? That isn’t ok with me.

• The Shield. I loved that her power was defined as something specific.  I loved that she was given room in the plot to explore it and take charge of it.  I love that she used it to protect the people around her and that it took practice and focus.  There was a kind of zen beauty about the descriptions of her learning about herself in order to become powerful and prepared to face her enemies.

• The second “book” from Jacob’s POV. I really appreciated that he was given his own growth arc in the middle here.  We get to be in his head to begin to see him take on the kind of accountability and awareness he needs to be a compassionate human being, and have his leadership qualities emerge.  He feels empathy for Leah and that provides a genuinely mature lens for him to look at relationships and long for partnership himself, instead of the forceful, obnoxious and entitled hormonal bullshit that he was spewing at Bella throughout Eclipse. I was pleased with this growth… that is until he imprints on the baby in the next book.  Then we see his character turn back into the petty, jealous, overprotective, arrogant and macho man-boy that he was before.   Even though I feel for his character, good intentions only get you so far with very poor behavior.   So Jacob is either too much of a egocentric asshole for me OR his character was intended to be better than that and is just written poorly in the last book.  I suspect it’s a bit of both.

• Renesmee’s gift. It was very clever to have nonverbal communication be an essential part of her tie-in with the action.  I liked that it was oddly congruant with Edward and Bella’s gifts. I did not like her character’s inclusion as the major vehicle for this plot.  Not at all.  However, since she was what she was, I did like the way her particular talent was utilized and it was neatly described.

• The description of the wedding. Other than the appearance/makeover crap that I already mentioned, the rest of that chapter was terribly beautiful and sweet.  I loved Renee and Esme as buddies.  I love Alice’s planning and secrecy.  I loved the desciption of the decorations and how it felt to walk in.  It was cheesy/magical/sweet in all the right ways.  It made it more poignant to have Jacob’s interruption be so sad and maddening.  This was well done.

• The gathering of the tribes of vampires. One theme that I really really love in almost any work of fiction is the alternative family structure.   While I felt that the timing of including all the new characters was deeply flawed, the ideas they represented for the Cullens and for Bella – a large extended family, united across their differences and geographic origins, was a good one.  I would have liked to see them over the course of an entire separate book, so that their characters could have been developed more thoroughly.  Especially with some of their supernatural gifts.  Some of those female characters could have been developed more richly and provided some much needed breaking-up of Meyer’s reliance of feminine gender stereotypes.  Then again, maybe not… as she flatly described the Amazon tribal vampires with some truly archaic, cliched “savages” imagery, I might have just been either further disappointed with more writing about these new characters.

• Edward being able to “hear” Bella. I saved the best for last. (and unfortunately, so did Stephenie Meyer)  This scene was wonderful.  It was the intimate scene I had been craving between Edward and Bella… the scene that truly did fit with their previous characters’ journeys.  Too little, too late, for certain, but still a deeply rewarding return to the soulful connection from the first book, even just for a moment.  I cried.  Maybe I will xerox this one scene and put it on the shelf next to the other books, in place of the whole novel.  This alone woud be good enough as a fourth installment, perhaps just enough.

Is that harsh?  Well… don’t look now.

Everything else or What I did NOT like:

• The pacing. I said it before: If she wanted to write three books, I feel that she should have written three, seperate, COMPLETE books.  This just screamed too much crammed in, too fast, and with WAY too many plot holes and weak spots dusted over in the pursuit of wrapping it all up in one novel!   She did not have time to execute this kind of plot, let alone wrap up a whole series.  Epic fail.  This was a ten car collision, piled up on a train track with doomed characters riding the train.  Even a great writer would have trouble keeping her characters up with this much action and she is not a great writer.  She lost them.

• The plot “majors”.  The terrible timeline-outline of major events that happen in this novel.  Let’s break this down:

Bella: wedding, first sexual experience, pregnacy, transition to a vampire and initial stages of parenthood within a matter of months.  Chracter motivation = nothing more than happy ending of husband-child-house-family… at 19 years old. 

Jacob: life-altering events of taking his birthright leadership position, growing up significantly and imprinting.

Edward: would have the same huge plot elements as Bella, if he was an actual character in this book. He makes guest appearences.

Everyone else: Constantly centered around the baby, including the MAJOR threat of the novel (Volturi). They prepare for a potentially massive final battle.  Potentially massive final battle ends up being an anemic stand-off.  Happy ending for all.

That was more or less a summary of the the “meat” of the plot of this book.   Aside from being way too numerous, the “majors” are not dealt with in a satisfactory, well-written and appropriately-explored way.  Not for any character.  None at all.  Not one of those “events” is given logical causality or followed-up by reasonable character development effects, with the small exception of how Jacob becomes the leader of his own pack.  A supernatural pregnancy is mired in huge character inconsistencies and seems almost to be a punishment for consensual sex between married partners.  Sex, later in the novel is thrown in as a time-passer, with no actual description or intimacy between the characters.  Just something they do.  (After three books of tension, this is hugely disappointing)  A baby becomes the focus of an entire story, with few realistic interactions.  Virtually no actual parenting by Bella and Edward is shown.  Renesmee is a plot vortex.  She is singularly the reason that everything in the novel occurs, and yet nothing substantiative happens, on a scene-to-scene basis.

• The Pregnancy. This one gets its own sub-bullet as a poor plot point, for sheer offensive handling.   It is not believable that Bella would go from “teenager with no interest in bearing children” to “obsessed with the life growing inside her” instantly.  Does this happen?  Of course, there are some women who don’t have an interest in pregnancy until it happens to them.   Does this happen to a character we have known over three books, who is supposed to be somewhat wise beyond her years and ready to make major adult decisions?  Not without some heavy character development – of which there is NONE.

If Stephenie Meyer could not adequately give this event weight or maturity for her character, enough to make ANY kind of sense, then she should not have attempted to write it – because it is shrouded in sloppy anti-abortion rhetoric from moment one.

When Edward sees it as a danger and a problem that needs to be discussed and taken care of?  NOT my baby. When it is discovered to be a vampire baby that is killing her?  Not even at the expense of her own life. And then magically – it is cognizant enough to hear and comprehend them?  It is capable of feeling emotional LOVE for the mother whose life its sucking away?  And Edward’s gift conveniently confirms its rapid growth into “personhood”, before birth?  Amazing!  Roll the excuses: But no… this isn’t about a “normal” baby… this is science fiction.  This is a supernatural, fantastic story… and you are politicizing it, making it about abortion.

Problem is, a lot of real anti-abortion propaganda *is* built on science fiction.  I know, because I believed a lot of it as a teenager, before I learned the actual science and pondered the complicated questions involved in pregnancy.

Even with the fantastical elements, at 15, I would have read this plot and understood it as being based on some realistic, anti-abortion ideals.  So yes, I have a major problem with the poor writing and the ideas involved in this plotline.  In the sense that there are dangerous implications in presenting a character’s feelings and reactions to what is (in real life) a very complicated situation, as simple emotional “truths”.  (Bella just KNOWS it is going to be ok because she has a little perfect baby inside her).  Especially with overly convenient answers to major problems (like risking her life) at every turn built on a foundation of christian pro-life rhetoric (it’s her baby, it won’t kill her, it LOVES her already).  Yes, I find this to be VERY problematic in Young Adult fiction marketed towards pre-teen and teenage girls.

• The name “Renesmee”. Barf.  That about sums it up.

• Charlie and Renee are unbelievable, non-entities. So Bella becomes a Cullen and gets a new family of her very own… and completely leaves behind Charlie and Renee.  Charlie at least gets a pitifully convenient re-entrance, but his character is such a ridiculous shadow of an actual person at this point, it doesn’t make sense and Bella doesn’t actually seem to have any kind of bond to him.  He, like everyone, is just captivated by the baby.  Renee doesn’t even get so much as a mention in the latter half of the book.  Renee.  Her MOTHER.  Remember how important she was in the first book when Bella thought that James was holding her hostage?  And for the record, speaking as a person who does not think all parents are caring, attentive, thoughtful and intelligent people and therefore shouldn’t always be presented as the “voice of reason” in YA fiction- even I think it’s borderline offensive how STUPID these characters are written.  And they get progressively more stupid as the series goes on.  Again – is it intended or just poor writing?

And finally… Breaking Dawn leaves burning questions:

• Where the fuck did Bella go?  Where the fuck did Edward go?  And most importantly – where the fuck did Bella and Edward: the hot, intense and compelling relationship go? Lost lost lost.  All of it.  The characters became skeletons, portraits reduced to their most annoying characteristics, before nearly disappearing altogether.  And there was nothing that even remotely resembled their beginning interactions – the intimate and troublesome connection that they both felt in that science lab, the touchstone poignant moments like the conversation in the meadow or when Edward played her lullaby on the piano… where was the love?  Love involves conversations, personality, common interests and enjoyment of time spent together, not just the recollection of a series of happenings to two people who happen to be married and fucking.  Seriously?  How could Stephenie Meyer let them turn into that?  This was an epic romance and it this book attempted to be epic in many ways, but didn’t even seem to try to give us an epic romantic marriage.  By the time I got to the end of Breaking Dawn, the happily-ever-after was handed to a couple of people I didn’t recognize.   And I was supposed to care?