In which Renesmee runs away.
Oh. My. God.
That summary doesn't tell the half of it.
And yet it tells everything about what this story is about.
Carlisle believed that she should have a classical education. The first languages she learned under his tutelage were Greek and Latin, and she read Homer and Virgil and Ovid and Herodotus and all those other men who mattered so much to the Great Western World. She didn't really enjoy it and they moved quickly on to other things, but a few years later when she was reading Romantic poetry he backtracked and gave her a volume of Plutarch. She was puzzled and a little annoyed, but she read it, and to the last moment of her life she didn't forget it.
There was a story inside about a Spartan youth who stole a fox. Some of his superiors met up with him on the road and he was terrified that they would find out what he had done, so he hid the fox beneath his cloak and strode up to greet them. When the fox began to disembowel him right there, in the middle of the road under his cloak, he didn't make a sound. He was a Spartan, after all. He could have flung the fox away and perhaps kept his intestines, but the shame of being found out was by far the more frightening prospect.
If Renesmee had been a little older she would have known that you can't do that forever—bite your lip and hope no one notices that something is killing you. Eventually you scream or fall over or bleed out on the ground, and everyone knows. Everyone knows and it's already over.
And that's exactly what happened.
The plot starts in Paris, not with Renesmee, but with a young Muslim girl named Fatima. Right there you know this is no run of the mill Cullen epic. The narrative weaves present and past seamlessly, just as one experiences it in memories while one is living one's life in the present - a stranger in a strange land. There is friendship and haven, foods she has never eaten before. She is growing out of her clothes. There are riots and weapons smugglers. Nessie, who has, in this foreign city, taken for herself the name Dorianne, tries to help.
The writing - well, the prologue above gives you an idea - but seriously, try this on for size:
So, here she was, spending her Saturday in Charlie's boat, scaring off his fish. There was something soothing in the breeze and the silence and her grandpa's steady presence—she felt like she could breathe for the first time in weeks. She turned to steal a glance at his profile—he was chewing on his bottom lip and staring placidly at the bobber on his line. She tilted her head, searching out the small changes she knew had occurred since she last saw him—a new line in his face, a slightly grayer tint to his mustache, something. Charlie was the only person in her family who altered, whose body was every moment marching slowly toward death and decay and a final ending. She loved him.
This story is heart-clenchingly good. Not only does she take the concept and the character of this hybrid child - born literally from the death of her mother's human body and life - and make her a poignantly real teenage girl, she also touches on so many other things --- social and cultural realities of our world, what does it mean to be human, what is a soul, how does one live with guilt, reconcile with self and others.
And now, at the latest chapter, after a terrible discovery and a tense escape ... a cliff-hanger to end all cliff-hangers.
Eleven chapters, only 103 reviews. Are you kidding me??? I've been following this story from the beginning, and I simply can't recommend it enough. Good things are meant to share. Check it out, and enjoy.
(EDITED TO PROVIDE LINK!)