 First edition cover | |
| Author | Stephenie Meyer |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Gail Doobinin (design) John Grant (photograph) |
| Language | English |
| Series | Twilight series |
| Genre | Young adult,romance novel,vampire fiction |
| Publisher | Little, Brown |
Publication date | |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover,Paperback) e-Book (Kindle) Audio Book (CD) |
| Pages | 563 |
| ISBN | 0-316-16019-9 |
| OCLC | 69104227 |
| LC Class | PZ7.M5717515 New 2006 |
| Preceded by | Twilight |
| Followed by | Eclipse |
New Moon (stylized asnew moon) is a 2006romantic fantasy novel by authorStephenie Meyer. The second installment in theTwilight series, the novel continues the story ofBella Swan and her relationship with vampireEdward Cullen as she enters her senior year of high school. When Edward leaves Bella after his brother attacks her, she is left heartbroken and depressed for months untilJacob Black becomes her best friend. However, her life twists once more when Jacob's nature reveals itself and Edward's sister decides to visit.
The book was originally released in hardcover on September 6, 2006, with an initial print run of 100,000 copies. Upon its publication in the United States,New Moon was highly successful and moved quickly to the top of bestseller lists, becoming one of the most anticipated books of the year. It peaked at #1 on both theNew York Times Best Seller list andUSA Today's Top 150 Bestsellers,[5][6] and was the biggest selling children's paperback of 2008 with over 5.3 million copies sold.[7] Moreover,New Moon was the best-selling book of 2009 and has been translated into 38 languages. Afilm adaptation of the book was released on November 20, 2009.
Reception forNew Moon was more positive than that for its predecessor. Some criticized the middle section's pacing; critics generally, however, argued the novel was more mature in tone, praising the character development and its depiction of human emotion.
OnBella Swan's eighteenth birthday,Edward Cullen, thevampire she loves, and his family throw her a birthday party at their residence. While unwrapping a gift, Bella receives apaper cut. Edward's adopted brother, Jasper, is overwhelmed by the scent of her blood and attempts to attack her. Trying to protect her, Edward and the Cullens move away fromForks, but in an attempt to encourage Bella to move on, Edward tells her it is because he no longer loves her. With Edward's departure, Bella suffers severe memory loss and depression for several months.
In the months that follow, Bella learns that thrill-seeking activities, such as motorcycle riding and cliff-diving, allow her to "hear" Edward's voice in her head through her subconscious mind. She also seeks comfort in her deepening friendship withJacob Black, a cheerful companion who eases her pain over losing Edward. Sometime after losing Edward, Bella starts to enjoy Jacob's company and friendship. After spending some time with Bella, Jacob starts experiencing some unexpected and drastic changes in his mood swings, body, and personality. As Jacob undergoes a very long, painful, and life-altering transformation, Bella and Charlie become concerned. A few weeks later, Bella notes that Jacob isn't as happy-go-lucky as he once was. She isn't so comfortable with Jacob's recent changes, and shortly thereafter, she discovers that Jacob has unwillingly become a werewolf and that there are other tribe members who are werewolves too. Jacob and his pack protect Bella from the vampire,Laurent, who was a part of James' coven, and alsoVictoria, who seeks revenge for her dead mate,James, whom the Cullens had killed inthe previous installment. Jacob forms romantic feelings for Bella, but she doesn't feel the same, having not gotten over her breakup with Edward. This only fuels Jacob's dislike of Edward. Jacob then saves Bella from drowning after the latter jumps off a cliff into the ocean and almost kisses her in the events following.
Meanwhile, a series of miscommunications leads Edward to believe that Bella has committedsuicide by jumping off a cliff. Distraught over her suspected suicide, Edward flees toVolterra, Italy to provoke theVolturi, vampire royalty who are capable of killing him, though they refuse, deeming his mind-reading ability to be too valuable. In contrast to Edward's rash reaction to the news of Bella's death, Alice Cullen cleverly makes a surprise visit to Bella's house, which overwhelms Bella. Bella asks a series of questions, and Alice tells her that she saw Bella trying to kill herself. As Alice's visions about Edward change rapidly, Alice and Bella are unable to clearly understand whether Edward is or will be safe. They rush to Italy to prevent Edward from revealing himself to humans so the Volturi are forced to kill him, arriving just in time to stop him. Before leaving Italy, the Volturi tell Edward that Bella, a human who knows that vampires exist, must either be killed or transformed into a vampire to protect the secret. When they return to Forks, Edward tells Bella that he has always loved her and only left Forks to protect her. She forgives him, and the Cullens vote in favor of Bella being transformed into a vampire, to Rosalie and Edward's dismay. However, Jacob sternly reminds Edward about an important part of their treaty: if the Cullens bite a human for any reason, the treaty is over and the wolves will attack. When Bella reminds him that it is none of his concern as being a vampire is what she wants, Jacob reveals it is his business as she doesn't understand what's going to be at stake for her and the Cullens. Before he can continue warning her, they hear an angry Charlie asking Bella to get inside the house at once. Jacob apologizes to Bella once more before leaving, and the story concludes with Charlie grounding Bella for running off to Italy.
After Meyer finished writingTwilight, she found herself writing multiple hundred-page epilogues and has said, "I quickly realized I wasn't ready to stop writing about Bella and Edward."[10] She began writing a sequel, which was entitledForever Dawn and skipped over Bella's final year of high school.[11] While Meyer was still writingForever Dawn, she learned thatTwilight was going to be published and marketed as a young-adult novel.[11] Wanting the next book to be aimed at a similar audience, she decided to write a new sequel,New Moon, which took place during Bella's senior year of high school.[11] Therefore, Meyer started writing the outline of the book and thinking of what her characters would do, and claims that she "swiftly regretted asking them for the story." She didn't like the idea of Edward leaving at first and tried to think of other plot options, but, in the end, she said that "she accepted the inevitability of it."[11]
According to Meyer, the book is about losing true love.[12] The title refers to the darkest phase of thelunar cycle, indicating thatNew Moon is about the darkest time of protagonist Bella Swan's life.[13] Meyer wrote the book beforeTwilight was published. Writing the book was difficult for Meyer as she feared the readers' reaction to the emotional pain Bella's goes through, what could be described as grief and feeling lost.
Meyer wroteNew Moon in five months. She found the editing process "much longer and more difficult than the same process withTwilight." Also, unlikeTwilight, which Meyer intended not to publish at first, she recognized thatNew Moon was going to be published and had what she described as a "horrible feeling much like stage fright" while writing. However, Meyer considers Jacob to be her favorite gift the book gave, as she liked the character a lot and wanted to expand his role and presence.[11]
The confrontation with the Volturi in the clock tower at the end of the book was the first scene Meyer wrote. She did not want to use a real city as the location for the Volturi's residence, as she did withForks.[14] She decided to name her city "Volturin"[15] and chose a location inTuscany, Italy because it matched her vision of the city being "very old and relatively remote." However, when consulting a map, she found that there was a city calledVolterra in the area where she had planned to place her imaginary city. Therefore, she chose Volterra and called it "a pretty creepy coincidence."[14]
The first draft ofNew Moon differed significantly from the manuscript published. Originally, Bella never found out that Jacob was a werewolf, and as a result, the seventy pages following Bella's discovery of Jacob's nature were missing. The epilogue was also different in title and content.[16] Meyer found it difficult to write Bella's pain over Edward's departure and often cried while writing those parts.[11] She mentioned that she never suffered a heartbreak like Bella's, so she couldn't draw inspiration for her pain from personal experiences, but based it on how she thought she would feel if she lost a child,[17] while insisting that it came from her character, who is "much more open—to both pain and joy." She claims that "the way she chose to cope with it" was unexpected.[18]
According to Meyer, the story was inspired byShakespeare'sRomeo and Juliet.[19]
The cover art ofNew Moon was designed by Gail Doobinin and photographed by John Grant. Meyer has expressed on numerous occasions that she had no hand in choosing the cover,[20] and said that she does not like it. She described it as "a very lovely ruffled tulip that means nothing at all".[20] It could also mean love and loss with the red representing blood but keeping the innocence of the title to look fluffy and nice.[21] Originally, Meyer suggested a clock image for the cover as she saw "time" as one of the most important themes of the novel. However, the artwork team that designed the cover chose the image of a tulip losing one of its petals, aiming to represent Bella losing a drop of blood.[22]
When Meyer finished writing the book, she wanted a title that referred to a time of day to matchTwilight. As it reflected the mood of the sequel, she titled the novelNew Moon, "the darkest kind of night, a night with no moon", to refer to the darkest period of Bella's life it being the next cycle in her life of change just like the lunar phases in the moon.[11]
New Moon was published byLittle, Brown in the USA on September 6, 2006, with an initial print run of 100,000 copies.[23] Demand for the book was so high thatadvance reading copies were being sold oneBay for as high as $380.[24]New Moon immediately rose to the #1 position on theNew York Times Best Seller list for Children's Chapter Books[5] in its second week on the list, displacing popular children's authors such asChristopher Paolini andMarkus Zusak,[25] and remained in that spot for eleven weeks. It spent over 47 weeks in total on the list.[26]New Moon also remained on theUSA Today Best Seller list for over 150 weeks after entering the list two weeks after its release, later peaking at #1.[6]USA Today ranked it at #29 on its 2007 top-selling books list.[27]
By 2008,Publishers Weekly reported thatNew Moon had sold 1.5 million copies throughout the U.S.[28] In October 2008, the book was ranked #37 onUSA Today's "Bestselling Books of Last 15 Years".[29] According toUSA Today, the book was also the second biggest-selling book of 2008 behind its prequel,Twilight,[30] and the biggest-selling of 2009, giving the saga the top four positions on the list for two consecutive years.[31] It was also ranked at #27 on the list of biggest-selling books of 2010.[32]
The novel received mostly positive reviews with some critics feeling that it dragged in the middle. Hillias J. Martin ofSchool Library Journal praised the book, saying, "Less streamlined thanTwilight yet just as exciting,New Moon will more than feed the bloodthirsty hankerings of fans of the first volume and leave them breathless for the third".[33]Kirkus Reviews praised the novel, describing it as "an exciting page turner...This tale of tortured demon lovers entices."[34] Moreover, Cindy Dobrez ofBooklist gaveNew Moon a positive review, stating that Bella's dismay at being ordinary "will strike a chord even among girls who have no desire to be immortal, and like the vampires who watch Bella bleed with "fevered eyes," teens will relish this new adventure and hunger for more".[34] Furthermore, Norah Piehl of Teenreads.com[35] thought that in the middle "the story sometimes drags, and readers may long for the vampires' return", though she believed that "New Moon will leave Meyer's many fans breathless for the sequel, as Bella finally understands everything that will be at stake if she makes the ultimate choice to give up her humanity and live, like the vampires, forever."[36] Anna Limber ofAbout.com echoed Piehl, saying that "the middle section is a little slow" and some aspects of the story were "predictable". However, she gave the book 3.5 stars out of 5 and said that the novel as a whole "has a brooding and melancholy feel to it, capturing well the angst of its teenage characters."[37]
New Moon won the SeniorYoung Reader's Choice Award in 2009.[38]
A film adaptation ofNew Moon was released on November 20, 2009.[39][40][41] It is the sequel to 2008'sTwilight, which is based on theprevious novel written by Meyer. The film starredKristen Stewart,Robert Pattinson, andTaylor Lautner, reprising their roles asBella Swan,Edward Cullen, andJacob Black, respectively.[42] In late November 2008,Summit Entertainmentgreenlit the sequel, which was directed byChris Weitz withMelissa Rosenberg returning as the screenwriter.[43] The majority of the film was shot inVancouver,British Columbia.[44] Apart from the film making there was talks about a graphic novel and there being three Graphic Novel books one being New moon adaptation in 2010.[45] Twilight will also be getting a TV series that could cover the New Moon Novel.[46]
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Quotations related toNew Moon (novel) at Wikiquote
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