This post was originally published on October 2, 2015 to “celebrate” the 10 year anniversary of its publication. Recently, it was announced that Stephenie Meyer would be releasing Midnight Sun, so we figured it was a nifty time to go back and revisit the classic recaps. This post has been lightly edited to better reflect our current style and views.
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Previously: A welcome, introductions and a giveaway!
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Marines: It starts with a Bible verse.
Kirsti: Technically, it starts with a dedication to her sister Emily, “without whose enthusiasm this story might still be unfinished.” DAMMIT, EMILY. THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT.
Mari: Perhaps when we get particularly frustrated with the story, we can just yell, “EMILY.”
Onward to the preface. An unidentified someone says she has never given much thought to how she would die, but had she thought about it, she wouldn’t have imagined this. Let’s just call this unidentified person Bella. Bella knows that if she had never come to Forks, she wouldn’t be in this situation. Scared as she is, however, she doesn’t regret trying to save someone she loves.
Isn’t that so interesting? Are you just going “ooooh!” (No? It’s 10 years later? Cool.)
Chapter 1 proper. Bella is upset because she has to leave warm Phoenix to move to Forks, the rainiest city in the US. She says her mother “escaped” that town with its “gloomy, omnipresent shade.”
Annie: I read these few paragraphs about WHY she needed to go to Forks, looking for an answer at least five times. Then after I finished the chapter, I went back to read them again, in case somehow I’d still missed this reason. But NOPE. She gave us zero reasons.
Mari: I think “zero reasons” is a thing we should get used to.
Bella’s mother speaks up, and we get the super awesome description that she looks like Bella, but with short hair and laugh lines. (C: “She looks just like me! Except opposite.”) I know what’s been said about this description before: that is a useless description because we don’t know what Bella looks like. I say that stupid description does actually have a point: Bella’s face is smooth and line free because she never laughs.
Anyway, Bella doesn’t want to go to Forks. Her mother says she doesn’t have to go, but Bella knows that she does. (A: But why, girl, WHY?) (C:BECAUSE.) (K: BECAUSE CONTRIVANCE.)
“I’ll see you soon,” she insisted. “You can come home whenever you want– I’ll come right back as soon as you need me.” But I could see the sacrifice in her eyes behind the promise.
I think we need science to unpack that for us:
Bella continues to complain, this time because she has to spend an hour in the car with Charlie after she lands. Charlie has done nothing to deserve this, except actually be happy that Bella is coming live with him.
Charlie is waiting for her at the airport, but she complains because he showed up in his police car. (He’s the police chief in Forks.) Bella says that Charlie gave her an awkward one-armed hug, which makes it seem like Charlie is the one making it awkward, but actually Bella stumbled off the airplane…? Enough of a stumble that Charlie has to catch and steady her. Was Charlie waiting on the jet bridge? Did everyone else trying to deplane kind of laugh to themselves when this happened? Was Charlie going in for a hug at all? These are the mysteries of Twilight.
Bella didn’t bring a lot of clothes with her because apparently her Phoenix clothes were too “permeable” for Forks. Charlie announces that he bought a truck for Bella. He bought it off of Billy Black, a whole human Bella doesn’t remember because he’s associated with fishing trips.
Bella wants to know how old the truck is and how much this truck is going to cost her. Charlie says he’s gifting it to her and Bella is STOKED:
“Wow. Free.”
Mari: Bella says that Charlie shouldn’t have, and Charlie says he did it because he wants Bella to be happy in Forks. Bella thanks him but in her head says that being happy in Filthy Forks is impossible, not even with a Wow. Free. Truck.
After the small talk is over, they ride on in silence. Bella says everything is really gorgeous and green (YAY!) but it’s too green, like an alien planet (SAD TROMBONE). We get to Charlie’s house and Wow. Free. Truck is parked outside and Bella actually likes it, so we get two paragraphs about her liking a thing (YAY) and then she sneaks in a bitter remark about sharing a bathroom with her dad (WOMP WOMP). Bella is really grateful that Charlie doesn’t hover (YAY), mostly though because she wants to “stare dejectedly out the window at the sheeting rain and let a few tears escape” (BOO HOO HOO).
Catherine: I like how she balances out her gushing praise by taking the time to carefully criticize everything in her path. It really helps me, the reader, to paint a mental picture on my mind canvas.
Mari: Bella is worried about starting school because everyone will already know each other, and she’ll be the new girl.
“Maybe, if I looked like a girl from Phoenix should, I could work this to my advantage. But physically, I’d never fit in anywhere. I should be tan, sporty, blond – a volleyball player, or a cheerleader, perhaps – all the things that go with living in the valley of the sun.
Instead, I was ivory-skinned, without even the excuse of blue eyes or red hair, despite the constant sunshine.”
1. “Maybe, if I looked like a girl from Phoenix should…” why is this happening?
2. “But physically, I’d never fit in anywhere.” What the actual hell? She’s literally complaining about not having physical counterparts (??) in a story where she will eventually find a bunch of pale people she’ll hang out with even though they want to eat her. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?
3. “Instead I was ivory-skinned, without even the excuse of blue eyes or red hair, despite the constant sunshine.” I don’t think those commas did what Stephanie wanted them to do. I spent a few second trying to figure out why the constant sunshine would make her eyes blue or her hair red.
In general: SHUT UP.
Annie: Can I second that SHUT UP? (C: Thirded) (K: Motion carried.)
Mari: Bella gets ready to use the “communal” bathroom so maybe she was complaining before because actually Charlie rents the bathroom out to a nearby summer camp or something. Oh, wait, we’re going into the bathroom so Bella can complain some more about her white, white skin and admit that OKAY, the problem isn’t that her white, white skin means that she can’t fit in with people. Wow. So surprising. Who knew. The real problem is that she has trouble relating to people her age. That’s code for she thinks she’s above people.
Catherine: But you guys don’t understand! She’s just different than other girls. Because she THINKS a lot and READS and is BORING and stuff.
K: She also says her skin is “almost translucent-looking“, which just made me think of John Scott from Fringe:
Mari: I mean, I don’t want to have a conversation with that.
That night, Bella has a hard time sleeping because the rain is loud. In the morning, Bella has breakfast with Charlie, and he wishes her a good day at school. She thanks him but thinks, “his hope was wasted.”
Charlie leaves for work and Bella takes some time to tell us that nothing has changed in this house since Charlie clearly isn’t over his ex-wife. (K: Except that she says “nothing was changed,” which is just grammatically icky.) Bella doesn’t want to be too early to school but she also doesn’t want to stay in the house. She puts on her jacket and even finds a reason to complain about THAT, saying that if feels like a biohazard suit. Outside, Bella even hates the sloshing of her boots and misses the sound of gravel or something. This book is already throwing me into some weird meta-place where I’m overwhelmed by all of my complaining about her complaining.
Catherine: We’re only on page 12. Please hydrate. God bless.
Mari: Let’s move this along, though I assure you in the details I’m skipping, Bell-waah (K: A+) is definitely complaining about something. She gets to school and for some reason feels nostalgic for the metal detectors at her old school.
The office was small; a little waiting area with padded folding chairs, orange-flecked commercial carpet, notices and awards cluttering the walls, a big clock ticking loudly.
Bella introduces herself to the lady in the front office. The lady recognizes the name and instead of thinking, “the guidance counselor knows a new student is starting,” she figures she’s clearly the subject of gossip all over Forks. Just wait until they meet you, girl.
Back outside, Bella’s relived to see that most of the other students are driving older cars as well. The flashiest car in the lot is a shiny Volvo. Bella says it stands out and some might even say… it sparkles. (C: wink wink) Bella parks and takes a steadying breath, giving herself a pep-talk. “No one is going to bite you,” she says.
K: So badly.
Mari: As Bella walks to her first class, she relaxes a bit when she realizes that her plain black jacket doesn’t stand out. It’s a plain black… never mind. The details in this book might kill me. She finds building 3. She knows this (and we know this) because a “a large black “3″ was painted on a white square on the east corner.”
Annie: Well, at least now we know where E.L. James got her taste for over-detailing everything forever and ever. Guess we’ve got Stephenie to blame for that, too.
Catherine: Accurate. This is definitely a ‘apple not falling far from the tree’ situation, if you’ll forgive the pun.
K: Meanwhile, I’m distracted by the fact that Bella follows “two unisex raincoats through the door.” Who knew raincoats got such a good education in Washington?!
Mari: When you are a real rainy place, you gotta treat your raincoats like first class citizens.
In her first class, the teacher gawks at Bella for some reason, and she blushes. She sits in the back and looks at the reading list. She’s already read everything on it, of course, because we are all beneath Bella Swan.
At the end of class, a boy who Bella tells us has “skin problems” and greasy hair leans over to talk to her. Probably the girl who told us she’d never fit in anywhere because of her tragic, pale skin should stop herself from identifying other people by their “skin problems.” She also guesses that the boy, Eric, is overly helpful. When he offers to show her where her next classroom is, she’s like, “yep. Overly helpful.” What next, Eric? Are you going to give her a piggyback ride all the way there? GOD. SO DAMN HELPFUL WHO ARE YOU.
Eric and Bella make small talk about the weather in Phoenix. He notes that Bella isn’t very tan, and she says her mother is part albino. Eric doesn’t get that she’s joking. He studies her face apprehensively, probably so that he won’t LAUGH if she’s being honest about a non-laughing matter. Bella sighs because she made a joke and someone didn’t think it was funny.
“It looked like clouds and a sense of humor didn’t mix. A few months of this and I’d forget how to use sarcasm.”
It’s hilarious to me that Bella would think of herself as some sort of standard for senses of humor.
Catherine: Because we all know she’s so fucking good at jokes.
K: The biggest joke here is this book’s existence.
Mari: Eric continues to be stupidly nice and tells Bella that he hopes they have another class together. “I smiled at him vaguely and went inside.” I had to Tweet about that sentence because “smiled at him vaguely” sounded real weird to me. I think Stephenie means that she’s offering a smile as a vague response but vague seems to be describing the smile here. I asked Twitter what “smiling vaguely” looked like and @thursdayschild said this:
Mari: Yes.
Bella tells us that most of the rest of the day passes in the same manner, meaning that people talk to her and ask her questions and it’s totally the worst. She says that MOSTLY SHE JUST LIES TO PEOPLE. Then she says that one nice girl is in two of her classes, but Bella doesn’t pay attention to anything she’s saying. So I don’t actually know how Bella knows this person is nice. In my head canon this person is just saying, “you are the worst and your plain black rain jacket is ugly,” over and over again.
K: Bella also informs us that Nice Girl is several inches shorter than her, but her hair makes up the difference. Sorry, Nice Girl. In my head, you now look like this:
Whatever, because all of that set-up was all for this moment because across the cafeteria, Bella sees THEM. They are sitting there, not talking and not eating.
K: It makes me so angry that these assholes get a lunch every day and then JUST THROW IT AWAY WITHOUT TOUCHING IT. Wasting perfectly good food is unacceptable.
Mari: I can’t remember where else around Snark Squad we used to complain about depictions of wasted food, but I feel like you’ll have lots of support for these feelings in the comments.
Anyway, Bella notes that these food wasters are also not gawking at her like everyone else is. She describes all of them but who cares because it’s 10 years later and we have this:
EXACTLY ALIKE, you guys, except for the part where they don’t like anything alike and are opposites. This writing is so good.
They are all definitely pale. Even more pale than Bella, the albino. She actually calls herself albino again, so I hope she laughed at her own sarcastic joke. We know how huffy she got when Eric didn’t laugh!
Bella can’t stop looking at the pale people because they are preternaturally pretty, especially the boy with the bronze hair. Bella asks one of the girls who the pale-stravaganza is but also reminds us that she forgot this girl’s name. WE GET IT, BELLA. YOU DON’T CARE ENOUGH ABOUT ANYONE TO LEARN THEIR NAME. STOP REMINDING US.
Nice Fran Drescher Girl looks up to see who Bella means, though Bella’s cheater-y narration tells us that Nice Fran Drescher Girl already knew thanks to Bella’s tone. Bella’s tone was clearly talking about someone pale with bronze hair, duh.
Let’s take a closer look at this cheater-y narration:
As she looked up to see who I meant – though already knowing, probably, from my tone – suddenly he looked at her, the thinner one, the boyish one, the youngest, perhaps. He looked at my neighbor for just a fraction of a second, and then his dark eyes flickered to mine.
He looked away quickly, more quickly than I could, though in a flush of embarrassment I dropped my eyes at once. In that brief flash of a glance, his face held nothing of interest – it was as if she had called his name, and he’d looked up in involuntary response, already having decided not to answer.
Don’t tell us how brief the glance was, how nothing was interesting about his face, and then infuse it with meaning that our first person POV shouldn’t have. YOU DID NOT GET ALL THAT MEANING FROM A BRIEF GLANCE. Cheater.
Nice Fran Drescher Girl tells Bella who they all are: Edward, Emmett, Jasper, Rosalie and Alice. While thinking about how old-school all those names are, Bella finally remembers that Nice Fran Drescher Girl’s name is Jessica.
“I finally remembered that my neighbor was called Jessica, a perfectly common name. There were two girls named Jessica in my History class back home.”
Fuuuuck you. You are the one who forgot the name Jessica.
Catherine: Bella only has brain space for names that were in ‘Wuthering Heights’, so…
K: A+.
Mari: Bella says that they sure are pretty, and Jessica says that they are all paired off, though. She uses the word “all” lightly, because Edward isn’t paired off. So, like, not all. Jessica explains about the Cullens and Hales all being adopted by Dr. and Mrs. Cullen. According to Bella, Jessica is also a jealous hater of the Cullens, but I don’t really get why we’re supposed to believe that.
Meanwhile, the Cullen+Hales have spent this entire time staring at walls and not eating. God, is it me or is that super intriguing? Don’t you just want to know more about the group of kids in the lunch room staring at walls?
“As I examined them, the youngest, one of the Cullens, looked up and met my gaze, this time with evident curiosity in his expression. As I looked swiftly away, it seemed to me that his glance held some kind of unmet expectation.”
Cheeeeaaater. Tell me how a glance can look like it has unmet expectations. If she had said something like, “he looked disappointed,” or “he looked confused,” then we’d all be, “huh! I wonder why!” But she infuses her stupid narration with information there is no way for her to have.
K: Plus, we have this gem: “His mouth was moving very quickly, his perfect lips barely opening“. I just…what. Do you even own a face, Steph?
Mari: Anyway, just like that, this super exciting lunch hour is over.
Next up: biology and what do you know, the only available seat is next to Edward Cullen. Also, Bella trips again. Edward is glaring and making angry faces at Bella. When she sits, he leans away, and Bella thinks she stinks. He’s quiet and tense throughout the whole class and when the bell rings, he runs out. Bella’s all, “he’s so mean,” and this from the girl who has literally complained every single time someone has talked to her.
Catherine: She’s also says that it’s weird he was so mean because he: “Didn’t know me from Eve.” For those of you playing the biblical metaphor drinking game, please, stop now. Your family loves you.
Mari: And the Snark Squad doesn’t want to be responsible for any drinking related accidents, thank you.
Some guy named Mike introduces himself and walks Bella to her next class. He’s really nice, and Bella even thinks so, but he’s actually just here to ask this awkward-as-hell question: “So, did you stab Edward Cullen with a pencil or what? I’ve never seen him act like that.”
Thank you for playing along, Mike.
At the end of the day, Bella returns to the guidance counselor’s office and surprise! Edward is there trying to get out of his Biology class.
Annie: By “arguing with [the guidance counselor] in a low, attractive voice.” Uhh, whut?
Catherine: Edward is so attractive, even his voice is handsome.
Mari: Yeah, but is it pale? Wait, what.
Bella is like, “OMG this certainly cannot be about me, right??”
“It was impossible that this stranger could take such a sudden, intense dislike to me.”
…
K: LOL. “I LOATHE YOU BUT TO DO ANYTHING TO STAY AWAY FROM YOU WOULD INTERFERE WITH THIS TERRIBLE PLOT, SO NEVER MIND.”
Mari: Later, Bella sits in her car to have feels and fights tears all the the way home. She was a right asshole to everyone the entire day and someone she didn’t actually engage with at all sends a few mean facial expressions her way and she’s boohooing.
Wonderful, welcome to Twilight.
Annie: It’s so much more awful than I remember! Huzzah!
Mari: To end, you guys know I like to count stuff. There were some repeated things here, like “gawking” and Bella tripping, but holy hell, does this girl love to interrupt herself. The sentence structure in general is all awful, but in this chapter, Stephenie Meyer used 57 dashes.
Catherine: And yet, she still couldn’t get to the fucking point.
Mari: If there is a point, we won’t get to it for while.
Corresponding Midnight Sun Post: Chapter 01 – Edward Cullen is a dick.
Next time on Twilight: Edward doesn’t come to school, what the hell. Find out more in chapter 2!
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
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I am a 30-something year-old human woman who lives in Maine. I'm a freelance writer who mostly spends time that I should be doing that, watching T.V. I also love reading and comic books way too much.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.