Criticize Twilight to Hell

Writer's (my) notes: I just wrote this earlier for English class. I was hoping I could retrieve the essence of critics in the UK, if you know what I mean.

Twilight: Vichyssoise of Verbiage

Twilight, a supposedly epic romance novel based on the forbidden love between a human and a vampire. Sounds good? It’s total rubbish.

The book starts with Isabella Swan in Forks, Washington. She is completely miserable, yet she still decides to go to Forks. In fact, it was revealed she was given the opportunity to go with her mother and not go to Forks, but she decides to go to Forks anyways. To make matters worse, even though it was her own fault she’s stuck in Forks, an empty little town with absolutely nothing, she still makes the situation as bad as possible and is a depressed little nag about every little thing.

Then, out of nowhere, Edward Cullen appears in Isabella Swan’s life. Suddenly, anything that used to matter before doesn’t anymore. Only Edward Edward Edward Cullen. In fact, she only spoke to him once before obsessing over him. After her first conversation, he disappears from school. The book is over because she knows absolutely nothing about Edward Cullen, yes? She is absolutely miserable in Forks because Edward Cullen disappears. I constantly had to slap myself in the face with a bag of peas to continue reading this book while repeatedly asking myself, “Why does Edward Cullen even matter to her?”

Now imagine the perfect man. Multiply that by one hundred. That is Edward Cullen, also known as God. Words such as “gorgeous”, “beautiful” and “perfect” were used to describe Edward Cullen. This way, the hearts of the young 13-year old girls reading Twilight will be stolen by Edward Cullen, who looks completely different depending on the girl’s standard of “gorgeous”, “beautiful” and “perfect”. On the other hand, Isabella Swan has next to no description. All that is known about her is that she is ivory-skinned due to being part-albino. Her mother was described as “like me, except with smile wrinkles.” However, since we know absolutely nothing about Isabella Swan’s appearance, this description of her mother is utterly worthless. Edward Cullen’s description is at least fifty times more thorough than Isabella Swan’s description. His description is to such an extent that even his breath was described.

At page three hundred twenty-eight, readers finally receive a plot in the story that is not (completely) about the romance of Edward Cullen and Isabella Swan. Fifty pages after the mention, the plot finally begin, and run for about one hundred pages (which would make it one-fifth of the book). There is nothing special about these one hundred pages that would balance out the sick boring material of the rest of the book. The plot at the end is extremely cliché, and feels like a plot device used to show Edward Cullen’s and Isabella Swan’s love for each other in a more life-threatening scenario.

Of course, there are many successful romance novels out there, but this just isn’t one of them. Successful in terms of profit? Yes, definitely. It has stolen the hearts of millions of young girls. Successful in literature? Far from it. To put it bluntly, the pages of this book is worth less than the paper I use to wipe my arse with, and I would do so with Twilight if the ink on the pages weren’t so tainted. For more than three hundred pages, there is absolutely no plot except the romance of Edward Cullen and Isabella Swan. Were there at least events to make this more interesting, or difficult for them to be together? No. This book entirely consisted of melodrama with the exception of the one hundred pages at the end. (The final chapter was back to the original style, which left a bad taste/feeling with me as I took the book and threw it into the fireplace.) Unless you’re a 13-year old girl hoping for your hormones to activate like a metal detector in a steel factory, don’t pick up this book unless you have some other ulterior motives.

The cover is quite nice though.

Rating: 2/10