The Host by Stephenie Meyer is reputed to be a hybrid of science fiction and romance. As a fan of both genres, I found myself disappointed. Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the novel and found many surprising qualities in it. It’s just that the strong attraction and sexual tension usually associated with romance isn’t one of them, and the fear of alien invaders taking control plus understanding of science associated with scifi isn’t the other. So what kept me reading this hybrid?
The novel opens during the “insertion” of an alien
into a human host. What caught my attention immediately is that the process is
not depicted as the scary, oh-my-god, violent act of pen etseeration that is considered
norm for most body snatchers-type stories. Instead the alien occupation comes
in the form of a gentle operation, with a Healer implanting a being called “a
soul” into the human host. This “soul” is already respected and admired by
others of her species because she has lived on more worlds than others of her
kind. Hence they name her Wanderer. The conflict is spelled out directly by the
Healer in the opening. This wonderful, gentle soul is being inserted into one
of the most violent and irrational human host, Melanie Stryder, who threw
herself down an elevator shaft trying to avoid capture and occupation by the
aliens. The setup is beautiful. It puts the reader on the both sides of the proverbial
coin. We admire and are curious about this well-traveled alien who awes her own
kind at the same time we empathize and appreciate the strong-willed, rebellious
human. Here is a different approach to the body snatching story.
The beauty of the story is the internal conflict
which occurs between Melanie and Wanderer. Melanie is cunning, insinuating her
own emotions into the Wanderer through dreams and selectively chosen memories
about her brother, Jamie, and her lover, Jared, while at the same time keeping
specific information about their whereabouts hidden. That information must be
kept secret because the Seeker who is assigned to Wanderer follows her, constantly
questioning the memories she is able to recover. It is the Seeker’s job to find
the remaining rebel humans and bring them back to be occupied by souls. She is obnoxiously
aggressive in these duties. In fact the distaste that both Melanie and Wanderer
feel for the Seeker is the first thing they agree on. Melanie’s fear for Jamie
and Jared’s safety and her desire to be with them is strong enough to eventually
infiltrate the Wanderer’s body and mind, slowly making Melanie’s feelings
dominant enough to manipulate Wanderer into searching for the concealed camp of
Jebediah, Melanie’s survivalist uncle.
Additional conflicts arise when Wanderer is captured
by Jeb and his band of human survivors. Wanderer is held hostage in an extensive
cave system with humans who want to kill her, but Jeb’s curiosity is peeked by her.
He seems to see something in Wanderer, aka Wanda, which the others don’t, so Jeb
keeps her alive against popular opinion. Melanie’s beloved Jared hates Wanda
even more than the other humans do. This amplifies the inner conflict between
Melanie, who wants to touch Jared, and Wanda, who wants to avoid Jared’s
violent reactions. The situation is complicated because Melanie is actually
jealous of Wanda. Melanie doesn’t want Jared to touch Wanda! Under Jeb’s
orders, Wanda participates in the daily chores of living in the community,
planting crops, cooking food, etc. Wimpy Wanda is terrified to come out of the
hole in which she’s been kept, but likes the thought of contributing to the
common good, an idea that permeates the book. Wanderer reacts nonviolently to
all the human violence while battling the inner conflict of Melanie’s desire to
strike back or reach out. One by one, the humans begin to tolerate Wanda’s presence,
then accept her. One human, Ian, even falls in love with Wanda…not Melanie. This
creates a strange love square instead of a love triangle between Melanie,
Jared, Ian and Wanda.
Wanda eventually wins the trust of the vehement
humans with her unflinching nonviolence and desire to promote the common good. This
dichotomy of violence-pacifism and egotism-altruism is the story’s strength and
its weakness. Wanda acts with such perfect pacifism that she makes Gandhi look like
a thug. Even Melanie becomes a compatriot, a friend, and then a sister to this
alien intelligence possessing her body. When Wanda insists that she must forfeit
her own life to give the body back to Melanie, Melanie rejects the idea. If
this doesn’t test the limits of believability enough, the solution does. The
humans hunt for and find another human body who is younger and hence more malleable
than Melanie. They insert the parasitic soul into this body, which is frail and
beautiful with long golden hair. Think of fairytale princess and you’ll have
the general idea. Anyway, Jared gets Melanie back, Ian gets to keep Wanda, and
all is right with the fracked up world.
This is apparently Ms. Meyer’s first attempt at
writing for a mature audience, so we need to be tolerant of the simple sentence
structure, vocabulary and happily-ever-after ending. Because, let’s face it,
the ideas are fresh against the stale back-drop of body-snatcher mentality.
However, as an adult reader I’d like to see a more creative approach to naming than
calling doctors “Healer”, alien analgesics “No Pain”, antibiotics called “Heal” and scar
minimizers named “Smooth.” I’d also like to see more complexity in the alien
personalities. After all, we expect an alien race that has taken control of at
least nine different planets to be more sophisticated and to have a more mature
attitude toward the multitude of life-styles presented by species that are
Bats, Dolphins, Spiders and Flowers.
There is now a movie based on this book and I’m
curious about how they will handle and change the story line of this would-be
science fiction/romance. I’ll let you know my take on it after I’ve seen it. In
the meantime, I still recommend reading this book.
Rhodes FitzWilliam