REVIEW: Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer

**This is a copy of the review I wrote under my husband’s name for Ama​zon​.com

Eclipse, for those not yet acquainted with the teen romance saga, is the third instal­ment in the Twi­light series cen­tred around Bella, a human girl, and her rela­tion­ships with Edward, the unearthly beau­ti­ful and gifted vam­pire who is also the love of her life, and Jacob, brood­ing rebel and recently turned were­wolf who com­forts Bella when Edward aban­dons her. At the end of Book Two (New Moon) it tran­spires that Edward left Bella in an attempt to pro­tect her from him­self and his vam­pire fam­ily, but later returned, re-uniting the pair. Jacob, by now deeply in love with Bella despite her asser­tion of being “just friends”, is left venge­ful and broken-hearted by the idea that Bella wishes to become a vam­pire herself.

The series already boasts an impres­sively large fan­base and the release of Eclipse was antic­i­pated with fever­ish excite­ment — com­par­isons were even being made, in hushed tones, to the famed Harry Potter.

It is with some sur­prise, then, that the recep­tion of above-mentioned tome can only be described as luke­warm. Even pre­vi­ously loyal fans have expressed dis­ap­point­ment. One pon­ders the ques­tion: What went wrong?

Whilst Stephe­nie Meyer is cer­tainly no Jane Austen, her writ­ing style bears tes­ti­mony to a lit­er­ary back­ground and is fueled by a rich imag­i­na­tion; I don’t believe this is what let her down.

Part of the answer lies in the com­par­i­son thrust, per­haps unfairly, upon the shoul­ders of Bella and her beaus, with the Boy Who Lived. Unlike JK Rowling’s cre­ations, the inhab­i­tants of Forks, Wash­ing­ton, have not matured or evolved in any notice­able way. Bella appears to have regressed, if any­thing at all. Much of the nar­ra­tive is ded­i­cated to her inter­nal strug­gles, becom­ing frankly tire­some at times. Her ambiva­lence to the idea of mar­riage, her uncer­tainty regard­ing the trade of her mor­tal life for the undead, fret­ting over Jacob’s hurt feel­ings and the result­ing down­ward spi­ral of guilt and self-loathing entirely over­shad­ows the thinly veiled sus­pense plot, which hardly deserves a men­tion. For all her intro­spec­tion, she appears no wiser. Her actions remain rash, her behav­iour petu­lant and her judge­ment poor.

Edward, for­merly darkly dan­ger­ous beneath his gen­tle­manly veneer, always torn between his love for Bella and his vam­piric nature, seems to have been stripped of all depth. Apart from his ever-expressive eye­brows, he shows hardly any emo­tion or pas­sion. As for his issues regard­ing phys­i­cal inti­macy: he and Bella have always main­tained a chaste rela­tion­ship, made nec­es­sary by the obvi­ous risks to her. This was beau­ti­fully sym­bolic in its own right and needed noth­ing more. Sadly, in Eclipse this has been cast aside. Fol­low­ing what can only be described as fore­play, Edward refuses to take her virtue on grounds of his moral beliefs. The scene could have been taken from a sex edu­ca­tion video. Fur­ther­more, his pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with her safety and meek accep­tance of her “love” for Jacob por­trays him more as a father fig­ure than a boyfriend.

As for the were­wolf man-boy Jacob, he is a like­able enough sup­port­ing char­ac­ter, who has added an inter­est­ing dimen­sion to the tale, but has out­grown his place like an unruly ficus. Here, I believe, lies the answer as to What Went Wrong: the unex­pected suc­cess of Twi­light, forc­ing Meyer to push the story fur­ther than she first intended. If we are hon­est, we must admit that boy-meets-girl-love-forever-after can­not sup­port a series of three, let alone four vol­umes. So the skewed love tri­an­gle is inserted, after the fact and so obvi­ously not part of the orig­i­nal plan, like bunny ears pinned to a cat.

A lost cause, then? This will be deter­mined by the fourth and, hope­fully, last book in the series. Break­ing Dawn is due for release next year. Per­haps Bella will sur­prise us with some pow­ers of her own, be they super­nat­ural or not, and earn her spot on centre-stage. Per­haps Edward will return to his for­mer smoul­der­ing glory, caus­ing us to for­give every­thing else.

I am ever the optimist.