06/08/08

On Vampires

Something very odd happened at the end of last year. Atom Books sent us copies of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight books, a series of Young Adult novels featuring a teenager called Bella and her obsession with Edward Cullen, the mysterious new boy at school, and I became completely obsessed with vampires. The two occurrences were not unrelated.

This is not usual for me. I do not usually read vampire novels. It’s not a hard rule as such, more a rule of thumb. And my feelings about adults who read - and rave about - the Harry Potter books are probably best left unprinted. But Meyer’s Twilight novels have a very different and quite extraordinary atmosphere to them, despite the chaste, hand-holding behaviour of the protagonists; what Time Magazine called “the erotics of abstinence… they’re squeaky, geeky clean on the surface, but right below it, they are absolutely, deliciously filthy.”

The Twilight series, as well as Meyer’s other books for Young and Fully-grown Adults, have been a huge success on both sides of the Atlantic, prompting comparisons with J.K. Rowling and Anne Rice and making the leap to film, with the big-screen debut of Twilight due this Christmas.

So we were very pleased when Atom asked us to build a website for them, to bring extracts, and news and events, to Stephenie’s UK fanbase. It’s just launched, to coincide with the release of the fourth title in the series, Breaking Dawn, and you can find out more about it here, and visit it at stepheniemeyer.co.uk.

And if you want to take a break from the Rushdie, Berger and Hensher over the summer break, and discover your inner fifteen-year-old girl, may I recommend the Twilight books. Really.

Posted by James in Apt Studio work, Reading.

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