Customer Reviews

Nightlight: A Parody

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

It seems everyone on the planet has some level of familiarity with Stephenie Meyer's Twilight. Devoted fans eagerly awaited the next installment of the lengthy books. When the last book in Meyer's series appeared in August 2008, the books' fans switched their anticipation to movies based on the books.

Thanks to a parody from The Harvard Lampoon, Twilight devotees now have something new to read, although Nightlight's humor may be better appreciated by Twilight's detractors.

Nightlight pulls no punches in its entertaining vivisection of Meyer's mythos. Situations and characters from the source material are stretched, inflated and mutated to comic proportions. Twilight's Bella Swan becomes Nightlight's Bella Goose; the original's quirky lack of coordination becomes the parody's death-defying clumsiness. Edward Cullen, the vampire heartthrob, becomes Edwart Mullen, a "venture meteorologist with a bent for slowly accumulating money from .0001-cent web ads."

Edwart is not a vampire. A fact Bella Swan doesn't let stop her in her obsessive pursuit to date a vampire and have him turn into one of the undead. After all, Edwart doesn't eat his baked potatoes, snowflakes magically melt when they touch his skin, and he is able to resist the charms Bella is sure she possesses. All well-known signs of the undead to Bella, who manages to twist every coincidence to fit her world view.

The Harvard Lampoon takes every possible shot it can at Meyer's often clichéd writing and bizarre plot twists. Nightlight mimics Twilight's style perfectly, down to its mockery of New Moon's -- the second in Meyer's series -- depiction of Bella's months of depression.

True Twilight fans may bristle at Nightlight, but they're also the ones who can appreciate it the most. Without a basic understanding of Meyer's characters and plots, a Nightlight reader will most likely be lost. Those intimately familiar with Twilight will find much they recognize in Nightlight.

Hard-core parodies can be tough to get into, and the beginning of Nightlight tests its readers' determination. Absurdities pile up quickly to the point of, well, absurdity. The writing style seems juvenile, but mirrors Meyer's style perfectly. After the first few chapters, however, it becomes easier to settle in to Nightlight's rhythms and appreciate the fun it pokes at Twilight and its legions of devoted fans.

I hold that there are three kinds of people in this world:
- People who like/love Twilight
- People who dislike/hate Twilight
- People who live under a rock

And here's the thing -- every one of those people should read this book. It has, of course, everything one expects from a good parody: exaggerated new characters that lovingly poke fun at Meyer's originals, stylistic jabs (two words: blank pages), and Strong Opinions about sparkly vampires. But those things, though all done extremely well, are a given. And they've been done many times. There are Twilight parodies all over the internet, and a couple that have even seeped onto the shelves somehow.

What sets this one apart, though, is our heroine. Belle Goose is a clever hybrid of Twilight's Bella and... well, every girl of a certain age who has read Twilight and longed for an Edward of her own. When Belle moves to Switchblade, OR, she just KNOWS that every boy in her school is madly in love with her. After all, not only is she the new kid, but she maintains a studied indifference to her appearance that she knows can't possibly be anything but attractive.

But she isn't interested in any of them. She is interested in Edwart Mullen, the nerdy boy in the corner who has a strange taste for blood -- and who is quite obviously being tortured by his vampiris instincts, which tell him to either ravish her or kill her... or both. He doesn't tell her any of this, of course, but he doesn't need to. Our Belle is a woman of the world. She can't possibly be wrong.

What follows is the story of Belle pursuing her dream, which is to become the paramour of a vampire. I can't even tell you how much I laughed (and sometimes snickered... and I think, I THINK, there was even a guffaw in there) as Belle learned the truth about Edwart, and the truth about vampires.

Seriously, whatever your feelings are about Twilight, this is a book worth reading. Pick it up. You won't regret it.

I'm proud to be one of those people who loves to hate Twilight, but had somehow never heard of this book. Luckily a close friend made an inspired choice while gift shopping for me.

This book skewers Stephanie Meyer's atrocious writing so perfectly, I burst out laughing after reading the first sentence. By the end of the first page, in which the authors had already used 17 adjectives too many and laboriously described the protagonists' entire outfit and seated position in relation to objects in the car, I was in stitches.

Unfortunately, I fear the wealth of the humor will be lost on those who have not actually read Stephanie Meyer's excuse for a novel, but there's there's plenty more than her writing style being mocked here.

For example- lots of negative reviews here are posted by Twilight fans who claim to be able to laugh at it, but still didn't enjoy the parody. I think what they're missing is the ability to laugh at themselves. This book is part parody, part commentary. Towards the end the plot veers drastically from the source material in order to more effectively poke fun, not at Twilight itself, but at the teenage girls who can't seem to take it seriously enough.

That was a clever turn I did not expect to find in the book, but it makes the whole thing even more hilarious. (And sometimes cringe-worthy. I both laughed and cried when Belle demanded that Edwart stop treating her respectfully.)

Some of the negative reviews complain that the characters are stupid and the events of the plot absurd. I would direct them to the dictionary definition of the word "parody," in which elements of the source material are exaggerated for comedic effect.

Yes, there are a handful of typos scattered throughout, which I honestly speculated might have been intentional. (Satirical editing? Whoa, that's deep.)

I don't think I've ever read a book which has made me laugh this much. In short, it's a quick, fun read, and reflects essential elements of the source material more cleverly than the genre usually allows. If you enjoy reading 1 star reviews of Twilight for fun (I KNOW I'm not the only one), you'll enjoy this book.

The teen melodrama! The sparkling vampires! The self-indulgent wangst about nothing! The stalking! And of course, the thoroughly obnoxious heroine! Yeah, Stephenie Meyers' "Twilight" is prime parody fodder, especially since it sometimes seems like a parody of itself. One of those is the Harvard Lampoon's "Nightlight: A Parody," which is fairly entertaining but apparently has only a couple running gags to milk.

Our heroine: "Belle Goose: queen, warrior, chapter-book reader." She is A) interesting, B) smarter than everyone else, C) a man-magnet, D) super-mature and E) bewitchingly mysterious. At least, that's what she says.

And you know the drill: she deliberately "exiles" herself to her dad's home in Switchblade, and on her first day of school she encounters the pale, eerie Edwart Mullen. Due to several clues (saving her from a snowball! Possibly-changing eye color! Saving her from a Sega salesman!), she comes to the conclusion that he's a "vegetarian" (ie ketchup-eating) vampire... and not just a germaphobic dweeb obsessed with weather.

So Belle must get "perfect" Edwart to reveal himself to her so he can sweep her into his scrawny arms and make her his immortal chickie-boo. But the school nerd... er, vampire is so much "more worldly and more otherworldly" than Belle is. Can a hopeless dweeb (who probably isn't a vampire) find true love with a delusional egotist? Or will he be too icked out by having to touch a girl?

"Nightlight: A Parody" basically revolves around two barbed jokes. Edwart is a hopeless dweeb ("You don't think I'm a robot like the others, do you? Please Belle ... I ... I just couldn't take that"), and Belle lives in a fantasy world where she is the combined best of Mother Teresa, Audrey Hepburn, Marie Curie and Aphrodite (Belle "realizes" that the mailman is in love with her, along with "love letters" from the gas company and the IRS).

In fact, it milks those gags to the point where I wished they would introduce a few new jokes. Yeah, we get it: Belle Goose is only slightly more insane and unattractive than Bella Swan, and Edwart is a dork. Some new humor please?

Fortunately, the Lampoon people do manage to make the book funny anyway, with lots of weird non sequiturs (Belle regards dress clothes as "the parasitic enemy") and pokes at the original "Twilight" (Belle's parents can't even make cereal for themselves). The entire warped narrative is full of hilarious jabs like "Despite the fact that Italians are known for their tan skin and garlic-laden cuisine, I knew from my research that the most powerful vampire family had decided to live there forever."

It runs the two main jokes into the ground, but "Nightlight: A Parody" is a fun lump of "Twilight"-centric mockery. LEG CRAMP LEG CRAMP!

Browsing the shelves at Borders I picked this book up and read the back and started laughing. I didn't stop laughing - hysterically, to the point of drawing odd stares from other customers and feeling like I got a great ab workout - until my husband made me put the book back and leave the store. Now every time I have a free moment at the bookstore I make a beeline for this book (yes, I will eventually BUY the book, I swear) and proceed to have a good chuckle. Every single sentence in this parody is absolutely hysterical and is perfectly analogous with Twilight. I am not a Twihard nor do I loathe the books. In fact, I read them - all 4 - and found some parts entertaining, some not so much, but it was a good, quick, transatlantic, guilty pleasure. I appreciated this parody even more because I had read the books and I think even die hard fans can appreciate the humor. It's like the Wayan's brother's "Scary Movie" parodies: even if you looooved "Scream," you can still giggle when they point out some of the ridiculous in it.

So annnnyway, I give this book 5 stars because I have never laughed so hard at a book, out loud, uncontrollably, in public. I plan to buy it for all my Twilight obsessed friends and family members! Edwart and Belle forever!

As a recovering Twilighter- wait, scratch that- as someone who can now see the Twilight series for what it really is- A very badly written hodge-podge of everything an untalented "writer" ever read about vampires in OTHER AUTHORS' books, coupled with any Poor-Me-Teenage-Girl question and answer column out of Seventeen magazine, that took 4 books and half a million pages for something to happen and then it SUCKED- I needed to read this book.

I cried, I screamed, I beat my fists against my pillow- and it was all because I was laughing so freaking hard I thought someone might mistakeningly commit me.

It's absolutely ridiculous, stupid, disgusting and genius. I love how the description of Edwart's hair changed every time he was around. In this book we have Belle, a most loathsome character, just like Bella in Twilight. In Twilight, Bella is pretty much unlovable and you really want to smack her but you can't quite put your finger on why- in Nightlight the reasons are painfully obvious.

154 pages, you can read it in a minute, just don't read it in public- you might get locked up.

This book truly had some laugh out loud moments, but other times it left me feeling like the book was trying too hard to be a parody. Sadly the laughter was rare and you had to trudge through a lot of unfunniness in order to reach the next good joke. I have read better parodies, and would recommend checking out "Blogging Twilight on SparkLife (it's free!) for some really fantastic humor instead of wasting your money on a halfhearted attempted to milk the Twilight cash cow.

The reviewers who gave this book two stars or less are obviously Twihards. So don't listen to them. This parody is brilliant. I've only read the first chapter and I kept bursting at the seams with laughter. I think it helps to know what the original Twilight is like. It also helps if you don't much care for the original. But parodies are never meant to derogate the original. They wouldn't exist if the original didn't, so the parody owes itself to the parodied. So don't think this book is meant to tear down your precious love and "one of the best (and probably only) books [you've] ever read!" It's fun. It's goofy. It works.

Being a fan of the Twilight series I read the back of this book and laughed out loud:

About three things I was absolutely certain. First, Edwart was most likely my soul mate, maybe. Second, there was a vampire part of him-which I assumed was wildly out of his control-that wanted me dead. And third, I unconditionally, irrevocably, impenetrably, heterogeneously, gynecologically, and disreputably wished he had kissed me.

I do enjoy quick wit humor and in part this book had its funny moments and there were quite a few:

* Making fun of Belle's seemingly irresistibly to the male species from every classmate all the way to the mailman....

* Belle's mother's obsession by emailing her 40 times to see if she is alright...

* How Edwart would not be able to resist Belle's blood (her's was grapefruit scented!)

But honestly for the most part... the humor was a bit lame... the story line is dull and I found myself skipping pages just to see where it all ends up.

While fun to skim through and I did laugh out loud at times...this book would make for a funny gift for the Twilight Fan.... but I would classify it as just that - a gag gift.

I liked "Twilight", really I did, but you have to admit there is a lot to make fun of in that book. So when I saw that National Lampoon had released a "Twilight" parody book called "Nightlight" I was eager to read it. Although, I have to admit I got this from the library...I knew that it had potential to be horrible as well as awesome. Well, unfortunately, this book fell into the horrible category.

This book is about Belle Goose and her relentless pursuit of computer geek Edwart Mullen. Belle has decided Edwart is a vampire, but he really isn't. Edwart doesn't even really like girls but Bella has decided she is in love with him.

Okay first I will go through the good points of this book. It picks the right things to make fun of and occasionally there are references to the book itself that make you chuckle. Also another good point is that the book is short; it took me maybe an hour and a half to read.

Unfortunately these chuckles are few and far between. I expected this book to be a clever and witty spoof highlighting all the shortcomings of the original. It was not this at all, it was more of a dumbed-down slapstick routine put on paper. If you like slapstick and find immature, stupid characters to be hilarious than you will laugh your butt off. Otherwise you will just be happy this book is short.

Then about two-thirds of the way through the book things get strange and not at all funny. As Belle suddenly goes to a vampire prom and the story totally deviates from anything we have ever read before. Suddenly what was a slightly amusing slapstick parody turns into just a plain old bad story.

I was really disappointed in this book; especially since I was excited to read it and was looking forward to a night of humor and good laughs. Add to the above the fact that I noticed a number of plain old typos in this book and I began to wonder if it had ever even been proofread.

In summary, look elsewhere for a funny parody of "Twilight"...given all the things you could make fun of "Twilight" for, there has got to be a better parody out there than this one.