Book review: 'Nightlight' lampoons 'Twilight' craze
PARODY: Nighlight by Harvard Lampoon (Knopf Doubleday, 154 pages, $13.95)
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Strange things happen when a book series sells 70 million copies. Fan sites are built. Movies are made, drawing mobs of screaming fans. Towns are invaded by giggling girls.
Just weeks before "New Moon," the second film in Stephenie Meyer's best-selling "Twilight" saga hits theaters, "Nightlight" landed in bookstores. It's a parody written by the Harvard Lampoon, an ever-changing group of Ivy League undergrads who've been skewering populist literature since 1876.
Penned by four Harvard students, "Nightlight" is a quick-reading, comedic sendup of the 544-page tome that's grown into a cultural phenomenon. Its 154 pages follow the "Twilight" template but change every detail, from the glossy black cover with a chewed-to-the core apple to the come-hither copy on the back jacket, which reads: "About three things I was absolutely certain. First, Edwart was most likely my soul mate, maybe."
A computer geek with an awful name and even worse affliction - nosebleeds - Edwart Mullen is not a vampire, much as his wannabe love interest would like to believe.
Belle Goose is a recent transplant to the soggy Oregon town of Switchblade. An epic klutz who regularly knocks over her classmates like bowling pins and believes the entire male population of Switchblade High is in love with her, Belle is nevertheless "in the deepest love that has ever occurred in the history of the world" with Edwart.
"Looking into his eyes, I felt waves of electricity, currents of electrons charging toward me. Was this how it felt to be in love ... for robots?"
The freckled and red-haired Edwart, she is convinced, is irresistibly attracted to the scent of her blood, which she describes as "grapefruit." While hard-core "Twilight" fans may not appreciate Harvard Lampoon humor, anyone who's enjoyed the books but questioned the series' cult status are likely to be highly entertained.
Can "New Spoons" be far behind?
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