I’m back!
Himalayan washing, blinkingly early mornings and the treadmill of resumed after-school activities mean the Easter break is a fond, distant memory after only three days.
I love being reunited with my words (I never write when the children are home. Interruptions instantly morph Mummy into a Rottweiler, and nothing’s worth that.) However I miss the holidays. Don’t get me wrong; not for one second do I hanker after the constant bickering or the infinite taxiing, but school hols are when I read, really read. Now, I read year round – given a desert island choice between alcohol, chocolate and books I’d be torn … I think books’d win – outside of term time, though, my Kindle fires through fiction like a Lady Gaga dance routine burns through calories.
On Good Friday, I finished Stephanie Meyers’s The Host. To date, I’ve been pretty scathing about Steph. That’s because I loathe, hate and abhor the wishy-washy heroine of her Twilight trilogy, who sits back and lets life happen to her, moved primarily by the saccharine passion she shares with an undead guy who’s so good he makes me want to vomit. Honestly, Stephanie, have you ever encountered a real-life man or a real-life relationship? Wtf are you trying to teach our daughters? That all they have to be is mystifyingly pretty, enticing odorous to vampire-types, and the world, unreachable romance and immortality will fall effortlessly into their laps? That you don’t have to work hard, you don’t need a personality, and wealth and immortal love are the be-all of existence? Seriously? Yukkity yuk yuk!
Gothic Pre read The Host; I read The Host (so that I know what her adolescent brain’s absorbing in terms of emotional development and life expectations). I was surprised, delighted and enraptured by the sheer brilliance of it. I will even condone Stephanie’s rather slushy romance, because we all love romance and if you don’t secretly desire to be treasured and desired above the world, you’re not breathing. Her characters were real. And flawed. And vulnerable. Sci-fi’s not my favourite, however Stephanie’s concept of alien parasites, ‘souls’, that are inserted into human brains to adopt our lives and culture along with our bodies is intriguing. She creates a fascinating history for the ‘souls’ and explores their compelling philosophies. She tugged cleverly at my responses of admiration for and revulsion to them. It was a fabulous read. What I loved most of all was her resolution. There was no Independence Day victory of fireballs and heroism, but a mature compromise between what is and what has to be, Darwinian in its intelligence.
Well done, Stephanie. I’m sorry I was so rude about you. In future I will only be rude about Bella and Edward. Friends?