return of the novella

twilight fans everywhere went beserk when stephenie meyer announced today that she will be releasing a novella in early june. as anyone who has read this blog knows, i love the twilight saga. what you might not know is that i also love novellas. although it is difficult to imagine any form of fiction that i would not love, honestly, novellas are awesome.

for those who do not know, a novella is a fictional work of prose that runs between 20,000 and 40,000 words. it is considerably longer than a short story, but shorter than your standard novel.

a story can be good at any length, but publishing conventions limit artists, compelling writers to stick to creating either short stories or novels. i'm all for bringing back the novella. some (see: heart of darkness) can stay dead and gone, but others (the house on mango street, the pearl, animal farm, and bartleby, the scrivener to name a few) are testaments to the form's capacity for awesomeness.

meyer's book, the short second life of bree tanner, is supposed to number 192 pages, which, in my opinion, makes it more of a novel, but we novella fans will take what we can get where we can get it! the book is going to be sold for considerably less than hardcover novels are usually sold ($13.99) and a portion of the proceeds will be donated to the American Red Cross.

as the title suggests, the book is about the short life of bree, a girl who is turned into a vampire over the course of the novel eclipse. she is killed and transformed by bad-girl vampire victoria, who plays a much more prominent role in the novel. bree appears only once in eclipse. in this scene, she loses her life. the scene is haunting because it suggests that bree could have led a better, peaceful life if given the opportunity to change her ways. (redemption, as well as the free will to live righteously and against the logics of nature, are major themes in the twilight saga.) 

some might say that by publishing the short second life meyer is just milking the twilight franchise for all it's worth. it is very strategic to publish a new book just in time for the big-screen release of the film eclipse. however, i think meyer's choice to delve into the interior and experience of such a peripheral character just goes to show that even the most minor figures in a story have multi-dimensional life and depth in the imagination of an author. 

plus, she's bringing novellas back!