Out for blood

Unless you have spent the last couple of years packed in soil on a boat bound for Whitby, you will have noticed that vampires are back in fashion. It’s an international craze, with Japanese and Swedish films (notably the marvellously quirky Let the Right One In, now being remade in Hollywood) contributing fresh interpretations. The queen of the vampire scene was, until lately, the darkly baroque Anne Rice, author of Interview With a Vampire. Now her crown has gone to Stephenie Meyer, whose Twilight series, about teen vampires, have sold more than 100 million copies throughout the globe, as well as being made into hugely popular films. In a neat irony, the British-born star of the films, Robert Pattinson, has become such a teen idol than he can barely appear in daylight without being mobbed by screaming adolescent fans.

Stephenie Meyer is a Mormon, a faith which discourages sex before marriage, as well as alcohol and other intoxicants, including tea and coffee. Much has been made of the books’ emphasis on sexual abstention. Although they positively throb with pent-up desire, nothing more than kissing ever takes place.

The female narrator, Bella, falls in love with the pale and mysterious Edward. He’s a vampire, but — and this is Meyer’s genius — he and and family are ‘vegetarians’: they try to abstain from drinking human blood, preferring to hunt wild mammals instead. Over the course of the books, Bella begs him to initiate her into the vampire brethren, but for much of the series he is too noble to do so. It’s a clever version of many old stories and every teenage girl’s dream: Edward is cool and tortured and misunderstood; Bella is a pretty average girl, but she alone has his heart.