Book Review: Life and Death
Life and Death is the product of the 10 year anniversary of Stephenie Meyerâs Twilight. Meyer was asked to write something special for the anniversary edition of Twilight, and she decided it would be fun to bend the genders of all the characters in the original book and see how it changed the story. Twilight tells the story of Edward, a vampire, and Bella, a human, falling in love. Life and Death tells the story of Edythe, a vampire, and Beau, a human, falling in love.
I have always been a fan of the Twilight series. When the books first came out, I read them all many times and even worked for a fan website (RIP Twilighters.org). I do not think these are well-written books and their themes and plots tend to clash with my feminist perspective, but I have always enjoyed the books and the movies. Obviously, I needed to buy and read Life and Death (which was released without any publicity).
Meyer wrote an entirely new ending for this book, which I actually enjoyed more than the first ending. For this version, she wrote an ending that wrapped up Beau and Edytheâs story. In Twilight, she knew that she was writing the first book of a trilogy and needed to end with things unresolved. The conflict is swiftly taken care of, and the characters end up in the same place they started. L&D ends with a much more surprising climax, which I found more interesting to read.
I did have one serious issue while reading the book. I found myself really distracted by the fact that it was a retelling with the same characters. I kept wanting to compare each scene to the old book and my brain kept trying to correct the charactersâ new names to their old names. I spent a lot of time at the beginning trying to figure out who each of Beauâs friends and Edytheâs siblings was in the original version. Then, once Iâd established the old character, my brain automatically imposed that personality on the character. Itâs really a very unproductive way to read, because I couldnât tell you anything about the characters that I learned from Life and Death because my mind had already supplied the background information from Twilight.
Even though Meyer talked in her introduction about how happy she was to get to âfixâ the novel after ten years, there are some things that canât be fixed. Her writing style is just very unreadable at times. She will describe Beauâs actions for pages in short, similar sentences. She enjoys telling the reader exactly what is happening, even if that âactionâ is just Beau making dinner or reading a book. Itâs not an engaging way of storytelling, and Iâll admit that I skipped some pages, especially because I already knew what was happening.
I thought this book had a lot of things that the original version didnât, namely an interesting main character. Bella in Twilight is a very flat character. She doesnât have any likes and dislikes, she is never seen doing anything likeable, and her dialogue and thoughts are entirely about her obsession with Edward. Beau is given more scenes than Bella that show his personality, like a scene in which he pretends a girl has hurt his feelings in order to clue another boy into the fact that she likes him. These little moments made Beau much more likeable than Bella, and he seemed like more of a well-rounded character as well.
Ultimately, Life and Death is a fun read for anyone who read the original book, and actually did suit my feminist sensibilities better. The original Twilight seems to send the message that women need taking care of. There are some female characters who are powerful, but Edwardâs relationship with Bella is that of a stalker and protector. Those characteristics still exist in Edythe, which I still donât agree with, but there are moments in which Beau accepts that Edythe is stronger than him. Meyer has also made other important characters into women, which I thought helped the story a lot, especially when this romance is so clearly targeted for women!Â
L&D gives us a female leader of the Cullen household, a young girl who loves mechanics, and a Native American tribe that has a line of female chiefs. I was much more interested in each of these stories, because women were given a more important role and were not relegated to victims (like Bella), mothers (like Bellaâs mom, and Edwardâs mom) or flighty schoolgirls (like all of Bellaâs friends). Even the women who donât fit these roles (Edwardâs sisters, Alice and Rosalie) are still portrayed as either silly (Alice) or angry/moody (Rosalie). The women in L&D are complete characters with personalities, goals, and ambitions. I think Meyer actually did herself a disservice by writing this novel, because it has made even more apparent the issues with Twilight.
Iâm very interested to read more about Meyerâs opinions on the book, and I definitely want to check out some reviews of it. I personally thought it was an unnecessary project that really didnât enact any change. Why not a lesbian or transgender Twilight? Even an interracial Twilight would have been more meaningful. âSwappingâ the genders really didnât change the story at all. The alternate ending of Life and Death wasnât written because the characters switched genders. It was written because Meyer was curious about how Bella and Edwardâs story could have ended. I think it might have been better than the original Twilight, but ultimately my mind was too plagued by the original story to really enjoy the retelling.Â
