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Stephenie
Meyer seems to be making a career out of writing genre fiction
for those who don't like genre fiction. First, she made a
name for herself by writing Twilight, the wildly popular
and horribly addictive YA vampire romance series. With a literary
genealogy closer to Jane Eyre than Dracula,
the books do little for fans of horror, action, or occult
fiction, but they have managed to introduce vampire fiction
to a bunch of swooning teen and tween girls whose closest
encounter with the fantastic is watching Jessica Alba turn
invisible.
With
her first book for adults, The Host, Meyer attempts
to win over readers with an aversion to aliens and science
fiction. The premise is rather simple: Parasitic aliens called
souls have taken over Earth and have inserted themselves into
human bodies, thus controlling their hosts' thoughts, memories,
and movements. However, Melanie Stryder refuses to acknowledge
defeat and struggles to regain control of her body from Wanderer,
the silvery soul in control of her body.
Through
Melanie's memories, Wanderer becomes aware of the two reasons
for Melanie's fight for survival: her younger brother Jamie
and her lover Jared. As Wanderer learns more about the two
men in Melanie's life, she has difficulty differentiating
her feelings from Melanie's own. Wanderer even finds herself
falling in love with Jared, thus creating what may be, as
the book jacket describes, "the first love triangle involving
only two bodies."
Overwhelmed
by the intensity of Melanie's human emotions, Wanderer betrays
her species and strikes out to find Jared and Jamie, who have
joined a commune of humans hidden in the Arizona desert. When
she finds the clandestine group, however, the silver glow
behind her eyes reveals that she is a soul—the enemy—and
she is received with hatred and violence, even from Jared.
Thankfully,
The Host is not by any means a romance, and this gimmicky
love triangle premise takes a back seat to familial, platonic,
and various forms of romantic love. In descriptive but straightforward
prose, Meyer explores ideas of acceptance, human nature, and
spirituality. Humans represent the physical and emotionally
animated aspects of all people—the animus. The souls
are the anima, representing morality.
The souls
as a race are fascinating creatures, not because they are
alien entities or antagonists, but because they are so relatable.
Though they are essentially bodysnatchers who rob their human
hosts of free will, they are also pacifists by nature, creating
for humans a gentle, egalitarian society where money is obsolete
and all diseases are curable. Human emotions are thrilling,
though the tendency towards violence—whether in jest,
in imagination, or in execution—is both frightening and
deplorable to the selfless souls. They may be parasites, but
they do embody every sense of goodness that humans hold dear.
Had it not been for the whole bodysnatching thing, humans
and souls could be BFFs.
Wanderer
particularly feels the need to nurture and care for the people
around her, completely disregarding her own wants and needs
in the process. As inherently maternal characters, Melanie
and Wanderer treat Jamie more like a son than brother, which
is strange only in that Meyer keeps Jamie in an awkward state
of arrested development. Physically, he may be 14, but he's
treated like an eight-year-old. At one point, Wanderer even
gets Jamie to sit on her lap, which seems both emotionally
and visually awkward. Apparently, any age ending in -teen
is considered a child, as not one but three different relationships
between teenagers and 20-somethings are fretted over.
Despite
the distinctly maternal and spiritual themes, Meyer's adult-oriented
writing seems little different from her young adult material,
which is both a blessing and a curse. A few good tear-jerking
sentimental moments will adequately replace the bosom-heaving
sensuality of Twilight, and Meyer's imagination and
meticulous attention to detail are well intact. However, the
long jags of exposition and the rather sedentary action keeps
the book from moving at a steady clip. There may be a lot
to say, but very little actually seems to happen.
But one
of the nice things about Meyer is that her writing conveys
a strong sense of emotion without pretense. Even in this realm
of parasitic aliens, the ideas are universal; she writes about
who we are as humans in a voice that is honest and clear,
even if it is a bit idealistic. Science fiction fans may find
it underwhelming, but The Host is a valiant and certainly
thoughtful work from a woman who makes the supernatural seem
very humanly possible.
(May,
2008)
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