Things are clipping along at a good enough pace, and the next chapter is short enough, that I must needs take two chapters at once. This is not really cheating, if you look at it from the right angle, and in the right light. The fact that I will be done reviewing this book so much the sooner is a windfall, a bonus, an unexpected extra.

Chapter 21 finds Bella still holed up in a hotel room with her vampire protectors, Alice and Jasper. They are protecting her from the bad vampire. The bad vampire calls her up, and using a trick worthy of an old Get Smart episode, tricks her into believing that she must run off from her protectors in order to save her mother. That always works in the movies—if you run off from the main group, you can get yourself into a world of hurt, and eke out another twenty minutes or so of thrills and chills for the movie-going public. Although, come to think of it, I can’t think of any instance when running off from the main group worked out the way it was supposed to. Something always seems to go wrong.

Ah, well, on to 22. They all go to the airport to get Edward, who is coming in from Seattle. Not addressed is whether or not he flew first class, and whether or not flying in an enclosed space with a bunch of snacks who couldn’t run very far wouldn’t present too much of a temptation to him. But really, the secret of great novel writing is to know what to leave out.

She gives Alice and Jasper the slip at the airport with a variation on the old escape from the ladies room ploy, and then she grabs the shuttle to the Hyatt, and from there she hops a cab to her mother’s house. When she gets there, she discovers her mother had never been there—it was a nefarious trick—and the bad vampire was there. Not her mother and the vampire. Just the vampire.

“I heard, as if from underwater, the final growl of the hunter. I could see, through the long tunnels my eyes had become, his dark shape coming toward me. With my last effort, my hand instinctively raised to protect my face. My eyes closed, and I drifted” (p. 451).

Reviewing these chapters after recently having finished The Overton Window by Glenn Beck brings this question to mind. What is it with Mormon fiction? Does God think that Mormons don’t have enough money? Or is He trying to make evangelicals feel better about their novel writing chops by comparison? It is hard to tell. Whatever the reason, I am reminded of a comment made by Oscar Wilde about the death of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop, to the effect that anyone who could read that account without laughing must have a heart of stone.

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