Reading The Hunger Games infuriated me. Since when have heroines chosen comfort over passion? Since when has the creation of a fairer world been relegated to a secondary cause? For those who have avoided cinemas, bookstores and other public places for the past 6 months, The Hunger Games, is an extremely successful bestseller (and now a movie) presented as the “new Harry Potter” or “the new Twilight saga”. It depicts the story of Katniss Everdeen in the post-apocalyptic nation of Panem, at the time of the annual Hunger Games, an annual televised battle where 24 young citizens compete in a fight to the death. Selected to defend her district’s honor, Katniss’s surviving instinct and ethics soon turn her not only into a popular contestant but also into a symbol of hope… I can only suggest two explanations for the book’s success; either no one ever finished reading the Hunger Games trilogy, or talent has deserted young adult literature (which I do not want to believe) considering how much the first volume’s boldness quickly disappears behind the approximations and  flatness of the last two. A friend of mine once challenged me to write a post on the Twilight saga. At the time I had politely declined – could vampire stories really be part of a literary blog?  After my Hunger Games disappointment,  Twilight certainly deserves the attention.  It is certainly not a book  destined to become a classic, but it is a good read at least.

Twilight is first and foremost, a love story. When her mother remarries, Bella Swan chooses to live with her father in the rainy little town of Fork. Her life is soon transformed by the mysterious Edward Cullen. Who is this impenetrable young man who always avoids the sun and who seems to read her like an open book? She soon finds out he is different from anyone she has ever met and possibly poses an immense threat to her own life. But how can you fight love? Even with a vampire? Twilight recalls this unorthodox romance and the story of those non-human beings.  Will Bella eventually be turned into a vampire? The answer lies in the shades at twilight.

I have never really been into Science fiction, let alone vampire stories. Twilight only ended on my to-read-list due to my growing exasperation at those “Bella and Edward  love story discussions” where I couldn’t give my opinion. I was determined to read the first volume and hate it. Three sleepless nights and the pre-order of the last volume a month before its publication later, I was forced to surrender.

Don’t expect the thrill of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien’s masterpiece and the reference science-fiction novel.  However, in line with Tolkien’s principles, Stephanie Meyer retains the one indispensable quality of a good SF novel: a precise and coherent imaginary universe. Where The Hunger Games narrative is  elliptical, repetitive and somehow inconsistent, Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight succeeds in creating  an intriguing world of millenary quarrels between vampires and werewolves. What could have been the umpteenth review of impossible love between a human and an immortal, is strongly backed-up by Meyer’s attention to details and the centenary past of those  21st-century-labeled-vampires, dreaming of a world where they could live almost as peculiar human beings…

But Meyer’s main achievement remains Bella’s character. In a way, Twilight and The Hunger Games both offer an initiation journey for their heroines. Only one author, Stephanie Meyer and her Twilight, reaches its goal. Katniss, the courageous and revolted amazon of the Hunger Games’ beginning is sadly transformed page after page into this suffering indifferent creature, as if she had been lobotomized between two volumes. As far as Twilight is concerned, I reckon Bella’s awkwardness and immaturity can be sometimes annoying. However, she progressively finds herself through her commitment to Edward, whatever the danger. Her decision is absolute, almost old-fashioned, far from the known, far from the comfortable. Sure, she will never be a literary role model, a Jane Eyre or an Elizabeth Bennet, but at least has she the courage of her convictions.

MEYER Stephanie, Twilight, 2005, Atom, New-York.

And if you really want to read it: COLLINS Suzanne, The Hunger Games, 2009, Scholastic, New-York.