Bella is home, waking up after sleeping and is now getting dressed. I need to point out that many posts ago I wrote my belief that Bella may be suffering from clinical depression. Clinical depression, not "I'm just a bit down," but actual DSM IV depression to further back up the truth of my assumption I point out the frequency in which Bella sleeps. Unless she's around other people she seems to be unable to stay awake. One of the symptoms of actual depression is frequency in sleeping to escape the weight of the person's troubles.
We have little to no knowledge of Bella's fashion sense, we have only one real clue which took place in Port Angeles as she gave advice on dresses to her acquaintances. Finally we get a real idea of her clothing style and preferences, "I pulled on my brown turtleneck and inescapable jeans sighing as I daydreamed of spaghetti straps and shorts."
I'm not exactly her daydream here, the brown turtleneck I understand. The jeans I understand as well, except for that adjective "inescapable." That can go one of two ways for me, readers help me out here: does she mean "inescapable" in the fact that they are tight or that she is always wearing them. I read the first two times as the former and now that I write this I'm thinking the latter. Her daydreaming is problematic because she has given us the impression of a sullen loner who dressed the part. In fact, she stressed the fact in the beginning that although she was from Arizona she had no tan. How in the name of Odin's six-legged steed did she maintain no tan while wearing halter tops and shorts? The only explanation is that this is an attempt by the author to have Isabella Swan wax nostalgic for her home town and it fails if you remember anything about the character said earlier.
Dressed in clothes she apparently hates she encounters her father* and they have a brief chit-chat about her social life. Bella continues the absurd habit of hiding her relationship with Eddie from her father and she again posits no reason for this, "How ghastly it would be, I thought, shuddering if Charlie had even the slightest inkling of what I did like."
I kind of agree, if my daughter brought home a douche-bag sociopathic narcissist I would be aghast as well but this is not what she means. She thinks she's hiding a vampire, but she isn't. Because her father doesn't know that Edward and the entire Cullen clan are vampires. I know I'm beating the dead horse having mentioned it three times already but until he expresses anything disapproving of the Cullens she has no reason to laugh at her father's ignorance of her little secret.
Bella, in another display of thinking this secret boyfriend through, gets another ride from Edward to school. The entire time he rapid fires questions at her, which she regards as an annoyance but the rest of us normal people understand as regular. Information on pop-culture, emotions, feelings and such things are the normal ways that people get to know each other. The whole thing with the CD in the car is a coincidence but a normal one, and actually a rather cute one.
I'm skipping, it seems that Bella's mother's boyfriend gave her a CD that she listened to a little while ago when she was still trying to process that Eddie was a vampire. It turns out that not only has Eddie heard of the band, he also has the CD in his car. This is taken as semi-significant by Bella, but I'm not sure why. It's an odd coincidence but then again we don't know the name of the band, the internet states that Phil (the mother's boyfriend) gave her a Linkin Park CD. The timing of the book's writing means that this wouldn't be that odd. Linkin Park, was unfortunately kind of popular early in the millennium.
The rest of this whole back and forth is normal. I repeat it because I don't understand why it's envisioned as anything but by Bella. In the movie High Fidelity (I never read the book nor do I intend to), Rob makes the point that no matter how shallow it sounds a person's preferences for music, books, and movies, are good indicators of how the relationship is going to go. Especially for a high school girl with virtually no life experience. What else is she going to talk about?
Edward then prompts her to talk about her life experience in Arizona, which she has none. Edward should be more frustrated about this, and then I wish the book wasn't written from her point of view, but he does ask a good question: what she misses about Arizona. "I miss brown. Everything that's supposed to be brown--tree trunks, rocks, dirt--is all covered up with squashy green stuff here."
Are there a lot of tree trunks in Arizona that are brown? I picture Arizona has being an orange-ish red color that only exists elsewhere in Crayola 128 count boxes. Originally, I really wanted to attack her for this statement but then I realized that it isn't a hate of green or a love of brown, it's a love of home. This is the real nostalgia, she misses the place she grew up and in expressing it this way makes it much different than her absurd despising of the snow. Every once in awhile Meyer does shed cliche for nuance it's just too bad that the cliche always comes storming back.
Sitting in the car outside of Bella's house the time passes quickly as he pries into her mind. So quickly that Bella forgets their alleged need for secrecy and the time of Charlie's arrival back home is upon them. Edward teases her about it, "So, unless you want to tell him that you'll be with me Saturday...' he raised one eyebrow."
There's the potential for a good secondary plot wherein the hypothetical vampire continues to question why Bella is keeping him a secret but that must wait. I really like that Edward teases her because at least one character in the book realizes that this is stupid and pointless. All of Bella's friends know who she is dating and it's pretty safe to say that the entire school at this point knows, but for some reason she still wants to keep it a secret no matter how futile that might be. More importantly the people for whom it should be kept secret, Bella's family, already know. She's being ludicrous, and rather than give us futher explanation we retreat back into the cliche.
Edward peels off muttering something about complications as Charlie comes home. Curiously Charlie, as Bella's father and as a cop, doesn't notice the car that just sped out of his driveway. That may be reasonable because tension builds as a truck pulls in as well, "In the passenger seat was a much older man, a heavyset man with a memorable face--a face that overflowed, the cheeks resting against his shoulders, with creases running through the russet skin like an old leather jacket."
The blacks have arrived and we must now renew the tired conflict between vampires and werewolves.
__________________________
*I'm still sitting on a future post regarding her relationship to her father, but this time it is less creepy than before.
We have little to no knowledge of Bella's fashion sense, we have only one real clue which took place in Port Angeles as she gave advice on dresses to her acquaintances. Finally we get a real idea of her clothing style and preferences, "I pulled on my brown turtleneck and inescapable jeans sighing as I daydreamed of spaghetti straps and shorts."
I'm not exactly her daydream here, the brown turtleneck I understand. The jeans I understand as well, except for that adjective "inescapable." That can go one of two ways for me, readers help me out here: does she mean "inescapable" in the fact that they are tight or that she is always wearing them. I read the first two times as the former and now that I write this I'm thinking the latter. Her daydreaming is problematic because she has given us the impression of a sullen loner who dressed the part. In fact, she stressed the fact in the beginning that although she was from Arizona she had no tan. How in the name of Odin's six-legged steed did she maintain no tan while wearing halter tops and shorts? The only explanation is that this is an attempt by the author to have Isabella Swan wax nostalgic for her home town and it fails if you remember anything about the character said earlier.
Dressed in clothes she apparently hates she encounters her father* and they have a brief chit-chat about her social life. Bella continues the absurd habit of hiding her relationship with Eddie from her father and she again posits no reason for this, "How ghastly it would be, I thought, shuddering if Charlie had even the slightest inkling of what I did like."
I kind of agree, if my daughter brought home a douche-bag sociopathic narcissist I would be aghast as well but this is not what she means. She thinks she's hiding a vampire, but she isn't. Because her father doesn't know that Edward and the entire Cullen clan are vampires. I know I'm beating the dead horse having mentioned it three times already but until he expresses anything disapproving of the Cullens she has no reason to laugh at her father's ignorance of her little secret.
Bella, in another display of thinking this secret boyfriend through, gets another ride from Edward to school. The entire time he rapid fires questions at her, which she regards as an annoyance but the rest of us normal people understand as regular. Information on pop-culture, emotions, feelings and such things are the normal ways that people get to know each other. The whole thing with the CD in the car is a coincidence but a normal one, and actually a rather cute one.
I'm skipping, it seems that Bella's mother's boyfriend gave her a CD that she listened to a little while ago when she was still trying to process that Eddie was a vampire. It turns out that not only has Eddie heard of the band, he also has the CD in his car. This is taken as semi-significant by Bella, but I'm not sure why. It's an odd coincidence but then again we don't know the name of the band, the internet states that Phil (the mother's boyfriend) gave her a Linkin Park CD. The timing of the book's writing means that this wouldn't be that odd. Linkin Park, was unfortunately kind of popular early in the millennium.
The rest of this whole back and forth is normal. I repeat it because I don't understand why it's envisioned as anything but by Bella. In the movie High Fidelity (I never read the book nor do I intend to), Rob makes the point that no matter how shallow it sounds a person's preferences for music, books, and movies, are good indicators of how the relationship is going to go. Especially for a high school girl with virtually no life experience. What else is she going to talk about?
Edward then prompts her to talk about her life experience in Arizona, which she has none. Edward should be more frustrated about this, and then I wish the book wasn't written from her point of view, but he does ask a good question: what she misses about Arizona. "I miss brown. Everything that's supposed to be brown--tree trunks, rocks, dirt--is all covered up with squashy green stuff here."
Are there a lot of tree trunks in Arizona that are brown? I picture Arizona has being an orange-ish red color that only exists elsewhere in Crayola 128 count boxes. Originally, I really wanted to attack her for this statement but then I realized that it isn't a hate of green or a love of brown, it's a love of home. This is the real nostalgia, she misses the place she grew up and in expressing it this way makes it much different than her absurd despising of the snow. Every once in awhile Meyer does shed cliche for nuance it's just too bad that the cliche always comes storming back.
Sitting in the car outside of Bella's house the time passes quickly as he pries into her mind. So quickly that Bella forgets their alleged need for secrecy and the time of Charlie's arrival back home is upon them. Edward teases her about it, "So, unless you want to tell him that you'll be with me Saturday...' he raised one eyebrow."
There's the potential for a good secondary plot wherein the hypothetical vampire continues to question why Bella is keeping him a secret but that must wait. I really like that Edward teases her because at least one character in the book realizes that this is stupid and pointless. All of Bella's friends know who she is dating and it's pretty safe to say that the entire school at this point knows, but for some reason she still wants to keep it a secret no matter how futile that might be. More importantly the people for whom it should be kept secret, Bella's family, already know. She's being ludicrous, and rather than give us futher explanation we retreat back into the cliche.
Edward peels off muttering something about complications as Charlie comes home. Curiously Charlie, as Bella's father and as a cop, doesn't notice the car that just sped out of his driveway. That may be reasonable because tension builds as a truck pulls in as well, "In the passenger seat was a much older man, a heavyset man with a memorable face--a face that overflowed, the cheeks resting against his shoulders, with creases running through the russet skin like an old leather jacket."
The blacks have arrived and we must now renew the tired conflict between vampires and werewolves.
__________________________
*I'm still sitting on a future post regarding her relationship to her father, but this time it is less creepy than before.
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