“I’d never given much thought to how I would die–though I’d had reason enough in the last few months–but even If I had, I would not have imagined it like this.”
I have mixed feelings about beginning a story like this. In one way it sets up a dramatic scene full of suspense right off the bat. It also sets the tone for the story that follows. I can think of a few movies that did this really well. The first is American Beauty in which Kevin Spacey laments: “Remember those posters that said, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life”? Well, that’s true of every day but one – the day you die.” That quote set the stage for a movie in which nothing is given away, except the almost calm serenity that Spacey’s character has about it. You just know that until that point he viewed his life as a living hell.
The second movie that the opening line makes me think of is a much overlooked but awesome movie starring Denzel Washington called “Fallen.” “I wanna tell you about the time I almost died…” It was a cop movie so you know the mystery is already going to be there. The thing about the movie is that it did something very few movies with prologues actually do, it made you forget about the prologue. It used the star power of Washington and a very interesting and twisted story to make the prologue so integral to the plot that it gives a ‘holy shit’ moment rarely seen in cinema.
Done well, beginning at the end can be very satisfying. Done anything short of that: and its like the trailer to a romantic comedy that gives away the end before you’ve even considered waiting for the movie to show up on TBS in between reruns of Seinfeld.
The real problem with this prologue isn’t the fact that it sets us up for a main character in intense danger. It’s this segment, “though I’d had reason enough in the last few months.” This removes any sort of tension from any of the dangers that our (so far) nameless main character will encounter. We now know two things: that she is going to be in grave danger a couple of times in the novel and that each time she’s going to get out of it to face this oncoming danger.*
More interestingly is that we have to remember something about the author’s Mormonism, a distinct sect of Christianity that some Christians don’t even regard as being a part of the same religion, and opening the entire book as a preface before the prologue is Genesis 2:17 which reads, “But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; though shall not eat of it, for in the day that thou shall eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.” Coupling that with a quote from the prologue, “I knew that if I’d never gone to Forks, I wouldn’t be facing death right now. But, terrified as I was, I couldn’t bring myself to regret that decision.”
This is a pre-Christian, almost pagan worldview. Not because it welcomes death but because it welcomes death without the thought of afterlife. It is welcoming the end to a life that has been lived accepting of the good decisions along with the bad. I could write 3000 words on this concept alone tying in Roman/Greek/Norse religious views and the Existential problem of the eternal recurrence. Which is basically that if you were told that you were going to have to live your life over and over again to infinity would you lament or celebrate? Our main character seems to pick the latter which Nietzsche would think impossible from someone beholden to the slave morality of Christianity. Even I have some surprise.
The Norse often come to mind in this attitude not because of the recurrence, but because all of their gods die in the great battle. The mindset of the Vikings to worship their gods, to sacrifice for them, to sing their songs even though at the end of it all those receivers of worship, sacrifice, and praise would die themselves is what gave them the lust for life that lacks from the modern religions where this life is merely a rest stop before the eternal one. I commend our author on this point at least: she has my interest.
A commenter explained that the mysterious apple on the front cover of the book is representative of the forbidden fruit of the tree in Eden. What, however does it represent in light of the new context: does it represent the forbidden love between human and undead as her link to wikipedia indicates? Or does it represent the forbidden knowledge of good/evil or life/death that the character must now face? The first question is probably the more likely but the second is possible and what be much more interesting to me since it is less cliche. Maybe though it is neither and just a provocative cover.
Putting aside the theological and philosophical thinking the author has set a high bar for herself. She now must spend the rest of the book either tying in the tone of the prologue ala American Beauty or writing into the plot ala Fallen. Those are the only two good options left to her. No matter what, though the first actual chapter is going to be a let down as it necessarily must be a break in tension.
*Which then we know she will get out of because the book is part of a series.
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