Reflections on Bitten #1: Elena and Clay

I'm not going to review Bitten by Kelly Armstrong.

It must have been reviewed a thousand times and I'm not minded to summarise the plot and all that malarkey. For me, there two things about Bitten I particularly liked and that I want to talk about.

The first thing is the relationship between the heroine Elena, and the 'hero' Clay (though in a sense there is no 'one' hero in this book). This was a complex, wounded relationship that was portrayed in a deeply satisfying way. The second thing I want to talk about is the werewolf world depicted by Armstrong and that will be my next post.

There are spoilers ahead. If you haven't read Bitten, I suggest you don't read this post. It's an excellent book and this commentary will tell you things you won't want to know before reading.

One of the reasons that Elena and Clay's relationship is so compelling is because of the pace at which their history is parsed out. I was learning key things about their history right up to the end of the book.

In Armstrong's world, only males carry the werewolf gene. Men who are born werewolf are taken from their human mothers and brought up by their fathers. Werewolves can also be 'made' if they are (a) bitten and (b) survive, a rare circumstance. Elena is unique. She is a made female werewolf - the only one in the world. She was bitten without knowing what that meant. She did not choose to become a werewolf. Clay is also unique. Most werewolves only 'change' after they are adult. Clay was found as a child-werewolf by the Pack alpha, Jeremy. In Bitten, Clay's early life is shrouded in mystery.

When Bitten begins, Elena is living with her boyfriend, Philip, in Toronto. He doesn't know what she is. She wants to live in the human world and deals with her need to change in secret, hiding her true nature in various ways. Her life seems inadequate with only her hope for a near to normal life lighting it. Elena's relationship with Philip feels permanent and normal.

Elena receives a call from Jeremy asking her to return to Stonehaven, the Pack's headquarters. Gradually, we are introduced to the world that Elena left behind when she went to Toronto. We meet Clay - apparently a jealous ex who has been compulsively awaiting her return. The book wears on and we discover more.

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD...

We discover that Clay and Elena have known each other for ten years. That they met before she was bitten and were going to marry. That he was the one who bit her and that she never forgave him. And that for ten years they have had a conflict-driven on and off relationship but a year ago previously she left, intending never to return. This final realisation - along with the growing sense the reader has about the depth and intimacy of Elena and Clay's history - gives the lie to how her relationship with Philip is depicted at the start. We realise that that is a relationship built on shallow foundations and borne out of Elena's flawed notions of what she needs.

It's the patience with which all of this is revealed, and the smartness of the reveals through Elena's first person POV that makes the book - for me - so very successful and the central relationship so fascinating. The way you view both Elena and Clay shifts and shifts again. They are both damaged people with more in common than Elena can see or admit to. Elena craves normality and Clay can't give it to her. He's the most wolflike of all the werewolves with an ingrained disdain for the human world. Towards the end of the novel, Elena has an epiphany and realises that Clay is in fact the only man who can give her what she needs and that her needs existed before she was bitten.

Some may find Clay's single-minded possessiveness off-putting but Armstrong does two important things to lighten what might read as stalkerishness. The first is that he is completely open about his intense feelings for Elena - he loves her and wants her back. There is no moody pride-saving here. The second is that he has the greatest of respect for Elena's abilities and strength. He never seeks to protect her and treats her as a fully equal partner when they work together to solve the mystery at the book's heart. That Elena single-handedly saves the day and then chooses to return to Clay is a fitting conclusion to the book.

This is very much Elena's story. It's in her POV and we see her character arc. We don't really see Clay change or grow in any way. We know that Elena completes him and we know that he wants to win her - but he is already reconciled to that when the book begins - long before that in fact. Elena has to catch up to him and because of that, the first person POV is particularly satisfying.

We already know what 'sort' of book this is when we open it and therefore when we meet Clay, we're prepared for the idea that he is the romantic hero. We guess 'what page he's on' emotionally from the outset and gradually this is confirmed and then affirmed, and with each affirmation, Elena's self-awareness feels as though it's growing. This connection between the character reveals and the sense the reader has of Elena's journey are intimately connected.

Of course, this has made me consider the POV issue again.

Pure romance readers often seem to have a hostility to first person POV (though in this urban fantasy genre it seems pretty prevalent). I'm no expert, but my sense is that the old school romance way was third person fixed POV, the story told solely from the heroine's perspective. At some point, the revolving third person POV, largely (though not exclusively) revolving between the hero and heroine, seems to have become the norm. I must admit that from the perspective of the romance arc, this is my favourite POV form. I like to understand the internal development of both hero and heroine. Generally, however, such romances will depict the growth to love on the part of both H/H. In Bitten, the characters are already in love and the story is more about Elena coming to a point of being able to live with what Clay did to her. In that sense it's not about falling in love (the heady stuff of lyrical romance) but about the triumph of love over adversity.

Any other readers of Bitten out there with thoughts on this?