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Nightlight A Parody by The Harvard Lampoon

Nightlight is a spoof of the popular Twilight. Nightlight is written by Harvard University’s humour and satire magazine, which has been around for almost 300 years and is based on the British humour magazine Punch.

Nightlight’s Heroine is ‘pale and klutzy’ Belle Goose. When she moves to Switchblade, Oregon she meets super-hot computer nerd Edwart Mullen who she suspects is a vampire when he doesn’t eat his baked potatoes at lunch. When he then saves her from a flying snowball, Belle is also sure he is her soul mate. The only problem is that Edwart doesn’t appear to be interested in girls so how can she convince him to bite her so she can become his eternal bride?

Nightlight has romance, danger, creepy behaviour, insufficient parental supervision and even a vampire ball. It is about a girl obsessed with vampires (not surprisingly with all the books and movies on that subject at the moment) and looking for love in all the wrong places.

In case you have not read Twilight or cannot see the pattern so far, in Twilight, a misfit girl moves to a new town to be with her dad and attracts the attention of a loner boy who turns out to be a vampire. The Harvard version sticks to the plot of Twilight but adds some twists of its own making it a very funny read. It is also rather inventive in the way it pokes fun at its subject matter. It expands quirks in Meyer’s characters to the point where they become problematic like Belle Swan’s lack of co-ordination becomes death defying clumsiness at the hands of Nightlight’s writers.

For someone who had problems with the plot and characters of Twilight, it is good to see that others thought the same and decided to make fun of the book’s shortcomings. The main character in Twilight could easily be seen as too perfect, so Belle in Nightlight is obnoxious, believing that she is far better than anyone else for example. The book also points fun at the bizarre twists and clichéd writing while mimicking Twilight’s style perfectly. The funniest thing for me about this book though is the way it blatantly tackles the themes of obsession, manipulation and stalking that are all in the original series.

The book shows readers that relationships take work and communication. It also shows that you shouldn’t prejudge people and then make assumptions and then twist facts to suit the assumptions because you can then be completely wrong about people. It is intelligent satire for fans of Twilight with a sense of humour, detractors of twilight and those who have a basic knowledge of the original and enjoy a good laugh.

RRP $18.99
Published and distributed by HarperCollins Publishers
 

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