Friday 30 October 2015

Chapter-by-Chapter: New Moon, Chapter 3 (Part 1)

Friday means that it's time for another Chapter-by-Chapter post. I'm aiming to keep these going through November, hopefully we've got some short chapters coming up. All the same, this chapter is insanely long, so I've split it in to as it was running to well over 2,000 words.

In the last chapter we saw the aftermath of Bella's birthday party boo-boo when Jasper went crazy with blood lust. It was okay though, because Carlisle is a doctor so he was able to patch her up. Then Edward took her home to bed.


Today's chapter is number three: The End.

What Happens?

Not a whole lot really! Things are awkward between Bella and Edward. Oh, and Bella tries out her new camera and scrapbook at last.

Thoughts as I read:

I've had spoilers for this book so I've got a funny feeling I know what's coming. With a title like 'The End' coming not even a quarter of the way through the book, I'm fairly certain we're about to witness a Bella/Edward break up somewhere in the next thirty pages.

As is traditional, the chapter begins with Bella waking up in the morning. Edward heads out quickly and meets up with her at school.

Edward was waiting for me at school, as usual, but his face was still wrong. There was something buried in his eyes that I couldn't be sure of – and it scared me. I didn't want to bring up last night, but I wasn't sure if avoiding the subject would be worse.

Bella's wondering about how everyone is after the events of the previous day. I hope she actually gives voice to some of these questions because I'm wondering much the same thing myself. We have to wait for her to run into Alice to ask them though. Unfortunately she's off school today because she's had to go away someplace with Jasper.

Do they have vampire rehab? It sounds like the sort of place Jasper would end up going. Edward isn't giving away very much information other than the fact that they were trying to get Jasper to go stay with another little group of vampires in Denali. So not vampire rehab, but hopefully a group of vampires who live without trying to drain every human who gets a paper cut in their vicinity.

The development with Jasper has made things awkward between Bella and Edward. It's not a huge change really since I usually feel like things are pretty awkward between them. Bella's realised that Edward is feeling down about the fact all his family is having to go away and it's mostly because of her. Well, Alice and Jasper are really the only ones who have gone away because of her. Emmett and Rosalie might have gone away too but I think that's more because they just don't age and people will notice if they hang around too long.

That's got me wondering, if a vampire wanted to stay in a place for a long time, do you think they would have to use some sort of prosthetics to make it look like they were aging?

While I've been wondering about that, Bella's been thinking about seeing members of the Cullen family. She can't imagine Alice staying away from Charlie because there's some sort of weird relationship between her friend and her father; plus she'll need to go to hospital fairly often, so she'll still see Carlisle. She just can't go to their house anymore.

How did Jasper cope at school every day then? I mean, surely people at school got paper cuts and nose bleeds and other injuries that caused them to bleed. How did he handle those?

The chapter continues giving us a little recap of what happened to Bella the summer before. We read that book so we can skip past that. Bella continues wondering about whether it wouldn't be better to just go away with Edward and let his family all return to their home the way it was before. Apparently this will be better for him than his family being scattered all over the country. Um, perhaps Edward would rather be at home with some of his family than halfway across the country with none of his family.

We skip over Bella's time at work and barely a paragraph later she's on her way home, to find Edward's car parked outside her house. This is strange because normally he sneaks in through her window. What's even stranger is that Charlie and Edward are just hanging out watching sports on TV. This is one of those 'we need to talk' moments.

While she waits for Edward to join her, Bella starts looking at her birthday presents. She's starting to think that the best place for her to be is away from his family and suddenly she's feeling quite sad at the thought of leaving Forks. She's even beginning to appreciate the camera and scrapbook.

Regardless, I snapped a picture of my room. There wasn't much else I could do tonight – it was too dark outside – and the feeling was growing stronger, it was almost a compulsion now. I would record everything about Forks before I had to leave it.

I have a funny feeling that's you're not the one who's going to be leaving, Bella. She goes on to ramble about how perfect things are right now, I'm guessing she means before she got the paper cut because things the last few days haven't exactly been great for her.

All the same, she gets in a little photo session with Edward and Charlie. Then Edward gets up to go, telling Bella that he won't be stopping tonight. I have no idea what any of this is actually about. And considering the fact Bella then goes to bed, I'm surprised that the chapter doesn't end there.

I actually took a break from reading before continuing on with this book. It's such a long chapter that I felt the need to fortify myself with a relaxing bath and a healthy snack so I could keep reading. Anyway, Bella's been taking more photos and contemplating how much she will miss all the green stuff that she spent most of the first book complaining about.

Bella's still on another planet thinking about Edward and her vagueness is making me feel rather ambivalent about the whole story. The writing also feels kind of clunky:

At lunch, the silence continued. I felt like I was going to start screaming at any moment, so, to distract myself, I leaned across the table's invisible line and spoke to Jessica.
"Hey, Jess?"

I can't help but think that there might have been a better way of writing this bit. I mean, I can't exactly talk. I've never had a book published, let alone one that's been turned into a series of blockbuster hits, but still, I like to think if I did, I'd manage to edit out any of the really clunky bits like this.

Serious, this chapter feels like there's an awful lot of nothing happening right now. This is followed by Bella's friends taking photos with her camera, using up all her film and then it jumping to the end of the school day. Honestly, what was the point in that?

We do learn that Edward shows up in photos, which prompts the usual diversion into how wonderful Edward looks. We've heard it all before so I don't think we need to go into all that again. Anyway, she flicks through the pictures and Edward ends up looking colder and colder as she goes. Plus compared to him, she looks decidedly average. This is yet another nail in the coffin of Bella remaining mortal. For her and Edward to be happy together she obviously needs to become a vampire.

Bella works on her scrapbook for a while and even remembers to send her mum a thank you note, showing that her skills have improved somewhat since the last book, when she ignored her mum's emails. And so ends another day.


Since that's how these chapters often end, that seems like a good place to stop until next week.

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