Eclipse, Ch. 2-3

Chapter 2. Evasion

Bella is at school, and the Cullens are hanging out with everyone else Bella knows at school for some reason. There’s some conversation about nothing, and Alice’s plot detector goes off. That never gets old, does it, Stephenie Meyer?

Bella goes home to write to her mother. Edward suggests they fly out to visit her and Bella is really excited about this even though she rarely speaks of her mother without sounding annoyed. (Edward also observes that Bella has done very little with her birthday presents from last year. Nice of Meyer to remind us of Bella’s contempt for the kindness of others.) Bella asks about Alice’s plot sense, and she’s suprised to find out that it wasn’t about her. At first I thought it was Bella’s typical self-absorbtion, but it occurred to me that as often as Bella causes something to go wrong it’s not unreasonable for her to assume it’s about her.

Against Bella’s wishes, Edward suggests that he and she visit Bella’s mom in Florida. Charlie and Bella argue about this, and Bella eventually tries to visit Jacob. Edward, of course, has no intention of letting Bella make a decision for herself, so he disables her car for the night. As a consolation, he says Bella can lock him out that night if she’s angry. Oh, you know a relationship is screwy if the stalker gives his target the night off as an apology. (It’s not like a locked window has ever stopped him before, though.)

Chapter 3. Motives

After the long flight - chasing the sun westward so that it seemed unmoving in the sky -
it was especially disorienting; time seemed oddly variable. It took me by surprise when
the forest gave way to the first buildings, signaling that we were nearly home. 

"You've been very quiet," Edward observed. "Did the plane make you sick?"

What?! Did we miss a chapter? Did Stephenie Meyer invent a number between 2 and 3? Apparently Edward and Bella went to visit her mother after all. Here Meyer runs into a dilemma, for she clearly wants Bella’s mother to freak out about how serious Bella and Edward are even though she’s been show to have the attention span and cognitive ability of a hummingbird. Her solution? Have Bella tell us how perceptive her mother is. Sorry, Stephenie Meyer, but writing doesn’t work like that.

Oddly, this results in a scene where Bella’s mother notices something else odd about their relationship:

"It's not just him." She set her lips defensively. "I wish you could see how you move around
him."
"What do you mean?"
"The way you move - you orient yourself around him without even thinking about it. When
he moves, even a little bit, you adjust your position at the same time. Like magnets . . . or
gravity. You're like a . . . satellite, or something. I've never seen anything like it."

It’s called an “unhealthy relationship,” and I’d bet good money she has seen one before.

Anyway, Bella and Edward are apparently back in Forks. Jacob has apparently been phone-spamming Charlie for some reason. Bella calls him and Jacob just asks if she’s going to school the next day. And that’s it. It’s so creepy I’m suprised he doesn’t ask what she’s wearing. Bella reflects on this, and we get this painfully obvious reminder of the plot:

Had Jacob really been asking me if I was still human? Making sure that the werewolves'
treaty was unbroken - that none of the Cullens had dared to bite a human . . . bite,
not kill . . .?

Just for fun, try to think of a more natural way to remind readers of that loophole in their treaty.

Anyway, it turns out Jacob just wanted to talk to Edward. Oh, Bella & Edward are apparently at school now. Transitions are for suckers, I guess. We get this bizarre reflection by Bella:

So I'd misinterpreted Jacob's motives last night. Missing information, that was the problem.
Information like why in the world Jacob would want to talk to Edward.

Okay, I give up. Is Bella completely baked here? “I understand now…I needed information! Questions swim in a sea of information! This milkshake is so good it scares me! What if there was, like, another color in the rainbow? Would it look like one of the other colors, or would we have a totally different name for it?!”

Anyway, Jacob is as much of a jackass as he usually is whenever vampires are involved, and I have to wonder what’s up with Stephenie Meyer’s obsession with unlikeable characters. Jacob wasn’t exactly a deep person before becoming a werewolf, but since he tranformed he’s been nothing but an abrasive loser, and surely it says something that the only excuse for character development in this series is to make one of the main characters more of a jerk. And why is Meyer dragging out this friendship, anyway? Not even the characters seem to care at this point.

Anyway, nothing much of consequence gets said except that Bella realizes Edward got her out of town to protect her from Victoria. This is supposed to be dramatic, I guess, and it would be if they didn’t have the perfectly viable solution of just turning Bella into a vampire. What the hell are they waiting for, Vampire Awareness Day? Considering how much of a danger magnet Bella is, you’d think the Cullens would want her be nigh invulnerable as soon as possible.