You've undoubtedly heard about this book, Twilight, by Stephanie Meyer, an LDS mom living in AZ. I read it yesterday in preparation for book club next week. The plot was good; it moved at a fairly fast clip. I kept having to remind myself that it is young adult fiction, though; I think I expected more out of it in terms of style and voice. Actually, scratch that, some of my favorite books are young adult fiction (e.g. Harriet the Spy) . I have to put the cover of Harriet in here because I LOVE the old-school illustrations from the original edition.
Anyway, back to Twilight. I was intensely curious to read this book after hearing a bit about its origin (a dream the author had) and the facts about the author herself, not to mention the subject matter: a girl whose first love turns out to be a vampire. As I said, the plot draws you in, but I found lots of repetition of descriptive phrases and the like. This is annoying to me; I'm just picky about style, I guess, which is not to say I have personally mastered it at all. I tend toward the rambling phrase and overuse of parentheses. As if you hadn't noticed.
5 comments:
(I love parenthesis!)
yes, the repetitions do get annoying . . . but it did help me realize that she was the author of an article in the Ensign (not about vampires at all) -- as I was reading it, I kept thinking -- who is this?? do I know this person??? and then I realized it was Stephenie Meyer writing . . . the ensign article was called something like the grocery store line???
I know what you mean about being a stickler for style. I read some series my mom likes (the Mitford something or other) about a quaint town parson, etc. The plot was cute and pleasant enough, but the author overused certain phrases and it drove me nuts. One especially annoying one was, "To say that it was hot, was an understatement." She would say this in various forms and situations, but it always took me out of the story because it was so awkward. Also, she persisted in using three or four asterisks in the middle of the page to denote change in time instead of writing a sentence or 2 to just transition, which I personally found lazy. There were pages on which she changed setting or time with the stupid stars 3 or 4 times. My mother was slightly offended that I didn't enjoy the book; she probably thinks I am a pretentious snob (maybe I am) but I couldn't help it.
There is a writer at a rival paper who I swear writes like there is banjo music playing in the background:
"The year was 19-tickety-2. Pal Gordon was wowing fans with his newfangled race-time machine..."
And he writes this way for every news story! I always picture him looking like that man on the oatmeal commercials.
I bought this book and started reading it. I actually read young adult books all the time (Harry Potter, etc).
I hear you on the style, but the plot and the character details are pretty good.
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