The Girl Who Played with Fire
by Stieg Larsson
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Book Reviews of The Girl Who Played with Fire
Book Review: THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE doesn't burn as brightly as its predecessor
Summary: 3 Stars
Stieg Larsson's follow-up to the bestselling THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO picks up where the action left off for the two main characters, the journalist Mikael Blomkvist and his unlikely partner, the phenomenally intelligent computer hacker Lisbeth Salander. As the book opens though, they are now separated a world apart, with Blomkvist back home in Sweden and Salander lounging on a Caribbean island. This separation is what drives the entirety of the novel, with Salander accused of a horrendous crime that soon forces her to go into hiding. While the characters that Larsson introduced in his first novel in the series are still just as interesting, and while here the reader is introduced to even more mysterious aspects about Salander's past, the fact is, there is something missing.
Pitting Salander "against the world" and having her exist in isolation throughout the majority of the book is what leads to this being not as strong of a novel as its predecessor, because what is now absent is the interplay between the two main characters that made THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO so intriguing. The dynamics that existed between Blomkvist and Salander as he tried to decipher the enigmatic nature of her personality is what made the first novel so unlike any others of its genre, but now that the characters are forced apart and are no longer able to really share a scene together, a large portion of the story's appeal is lost in the process. This has the effect of magnifying weaknesses in Larsson's storytelling. In THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, Larsson would focus on revealing key details of the plot through scenes where one character would simply be telling another about it instead of letting them discover it through action. While this slowed down the pacing significantly, the conflict between the two main characters helped maintain the reader's interest and served to keep the pacing going at an effective pace. In THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE though, once again key elements of the plot are revealed in almost a deus ex machina fashion, materializing out of the blue and being explained away in mere dialogue. Stripping away the relationship between Salander and Blomkvist then keeps the pacing very slow, and the intensity of the building action that was so dominant in the first novel is now not achieved.
Having these important elements about Salander's past that she is so intensely private about being brought to light while she was working alongside of Blomkvist would have had a much greater impact on the overall plot of THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE, and would have furthered the conflict between the two main characters and thus made for a more exciting read. Instead though, having the characters separated throughout leads to more of a reactionary catalyst for the characters' development, instead of having a more proactive approach that would have in turn, helped drive the action.
This separation that forces the main characters into more of a reactionary mode also has the effect of weakening the overall dialogue found in the novel. Characters come off as not being as genuine as they were in THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, and in some instances, become nothing more than a stereotype. A prime example of this is the character of Faste, a detective working on the case who at all times remains misogynistic without ever showing any other facet of his character. In fact, these misogynistic overtones that seem to crop up throughout the novel, with Salander and other female characters constantly being referred to as "bitches," "whores," and even much worse, grows very tiresome and ends up diluting the overall effectiveness of the story Larsson is attempting to tell.
At the heart of THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE is what could have been a very compelling story dealing with the growing problem of the illegal sex trade that has been becoming more rampant throughout the EU in recent years. Larsson though relegates this plot point to a subordinate position to the murder investigation that is instead made central to the story. Had he tied these two elements together more cohesively, a much stronger novel would have emerged and a much more powerful sequel to his first Blomkvist/Salander novel would have been created in the process, allowing the dynamic between the two characters to be explored more thoroughly. Whereas before Larsson took the reader on a journey that built to an incredible conclusion that would not let the reader put down the book, here the denouement of the novel seems forced, and unfortunately the climax thus degenerates into a level that borders on absurdity and the fantastical.
The late Stieg Larsson is a good writer, and the characters he created in Blomkvist and Salander are very intriguing, they just work much better when paired together and allowed to have their conflict flourish. While THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE could have used some redirection and some overall editorial polishing, it still should be read by those who are interested in learning about Lisbeth Salander, a character I had previously dubbed to be one of the most fascinating to be found in modern literature.
Book Review: We're with you Lisabeth
Summary: 5 Stars
Meet Lisbeth Salander, a Swede. She is 26 years old, stands 4-feet-11, weighs less than 90 pounds. Multiple piercings and tattoos. Is a superhacker and gets by as a freelance investigator for Milton Security. Sleeps with men and women, as it suits her. Dresses in black. Knows martial arts. Has a photographic memory. Is a ward of the state and has a guardian. She has at least one secret identify.
And she can react with shocking violence when provoked. Seriously. Do not piss her off. She is dynamite in a tiny package.
Lisbeth came to light in "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," the first in Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy. In that book, she first met Blomkvist, the disgraced journalist and publisher of Millenium, a muckraking magazine. They were hired to discover the fate of a girl who disappeared nearly 40 years ago. They also go after a crooked financier. The revelations were horrifically perverse, the ending violent. Rate these books a hard R.
"The Girl Who Played with Fire" starts out about a year after the conclusion of events in "Tattoo." Blomkvist is back at the helm of his magazine in Stockholm. He and his staff are working with a freelance journalist and his wife on an expose of sex trafficking in Sweden and the story is going to name names, including cops, judges, politicians, etc., who make money importing prostitutes from the Baltic states. On the side, Blomkvist's still conducting his not-very-secret love affair with his editor-in-chief, Berger, who is married to someone else.
For her part, Lisbeth is island-hopping in the Carribean, spending her stolen fortune (see earlier book). She has a little adventure involving a hurricane and a wife-beater. I'll leave it at that, but the scene is a taste of what she's capable of. She returns to Stockholm and checks in on her guardian, a detestable lawyer who hates and fears her, who she is keeping on a short leash with information that would put him in jail if revealed. She rents a luxurious apartment (under her secret identity) and begins stocking it with furniture. She hooks up with an old pal, a lesbian, to show off her new breast implants (Lisbeth was really flat chested before).
All is just fine until one night the freelance writer and his wife are murdered in their apartment. Across town, Lisbeth's guardian is also found murdered. All were shot with the same gun, which is found immediately. It has Lisbeth's fingerprints on it. Her photo is on the front page of every newspaper in Sweden the next day. She is a target for the whole nation.
At this point, the novelist does something risky. Lisbeth disappears from the novel for about 100 pages. Three separate investigations get under way -- the police, Millenium magazine and Milton Security. A lot of characters crowd into the novel, including cops (both honest and crooked), reporters, private investigators, motorcycle outlaws, mental health professionals, even a boxing instructor. Nearly all of them, of course, have Swedish names. American readers might have trouble keeping track, You might want mark pages to refer back to if you forget who someone is.
It's a thrilling moment when Lisbeth resurfaces, sending Blomkvist a dramatic e-mail. They begin parallel investigations. Lisbeth is roaming Stockholm in disguise. She escapes trap after trap. Her lesbian friend is kidnapped, leading to a smashing (literally) rescue scene. In an incredibly cinematic scene, Lisbeth gets cornered by two armed and hulking motorcycle outlaws. It becomes evident there are people who really, really hate her. The book races to a conclusion that has Lisbeth, at one point, gun in one pocket and Taser in another, leaving mayhem in her wake as she blisters down the highway on a stolen Harley.
Dismaying revelations about Lisbeth's upbringing emerge during all this and the reader comes to realize that deep inside this ruthless and fearless young female warrior is a once-frightened and badly damaged little girl.
A word of WARNING: I liked this better than "Tattoo," which has more complexity but less adrenaline. Also, less of Lisbeth. But "Fire" contains a MAJOR SPOILER to the first novel. Highly recommended you read "Tattoo" first.
The book is seamlessly translated into English. One oddity, though -- The spelling is British (criticise, programme), but vehicle velocity is in miles per hour, which is American.
As those reading these posts know, Larrson died after completing only three in the Millenium books. The third and final novel has already caused a sensation in Europe, but has not yet been published in English. I may have to learn Swedish.
Coffee. Lots of coffee. Must be a Swedish thing.
The ending is a total cliffhanger. From what I understand, the third book begins at the very moment this novel ends.
Book Review: 4 Alarm-er
Summary: 4 Stars
Author Stieg Larsson successfully follows up his first installment of the Millenium trilogy, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Vintage)," with a glimpse of the eponymous Lisbeth Salander's sad and misunderstood past in "The Girl Who Played With Fire," a page-turner that keeps the reader entertained and begging for more right until the heroine utters her very last relieved and happy yet slightly cynical acknowledgment of sidekick Mikael Blomkvist's presence.
The two main characters, introduced and thrown together during the solving of the disappearance of Harriet Vanger in the first novel, don't share much page-time together in this second installment. Blomkvist, basking in his triumph over the Wennerstrom group, moves on in his regrouping of his financial magazine to prepare for his publishing coupe of the year: the release of both a book and full edition article on underage prostitution written by a notable journalist and his PhD candidate wife.
With her trademark anger and disgust over her emotional love/attachment for Blomkvist, Salander refuses her love further entry into her life. Always fiercely independent, now, after absconding millions in an exacting act of retaliation from Wennerstrom's private funds, she needs never to work again. But old habits die hard, she cannot help but `tap into' the lives of those she both loves and hates with her incredible computer hacking skills and the ability to mete out punishment with the dreaded vigilance and potentially lethal retribution of a technologically savvy Erinye. While in the midst of not leaving her digital fingerprint on Blomkvist's computer, she comes across a name in one of his files that resonates deeply from her past. Her quest for a connection leads to a triple killing--the journalist, his wife and Dragon Girl's own despicable guardian, Nils Bjurman-whom the reader has learned to hate from the first novel. When her physical fingerprints on the murder weapon link her to the crimes, uber survivor Salander furrows underground even deeper as a full-scale manhunt begins with an even fuller albeit skewed disclosure of her sad history with Sweden's social services.
Author Larsson drives his plot from alternating third person vantage points that give the reader a generalized perspective from a specific corner of the various stratums of Swedish life. We are privy to varying degrees of freedom as demonstrated by the social class exhibited by Larsson's variety of characters; we can actually feel the weight of burden placed upon certain undesirables by the social infrastructure--the skin of which Larsson (now deceased but also a one-time investigative crusader not unlike his main character Blomkvist) obviously enjoys perforating and exposing for its inability to defend the rights of over half the population it is in existence to protect. As Blomkvist rallies to prove Salander's innocence, Larsson expertly flips the scene from one exploited social group to another--urbane journalists, world-weary police, underhanded social workers, sex trade veterans, bisexual punk divas and in a group of her own, hacker extraordinaire, primo victim of the system, his murderously vulnerable Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. He creates a wonderful compendium of facts and activities that entertain with a purpose the reader is not likely to forget.
Like all such novels, this one relies on circumstances and coincidences that of course pull the book together as a novel with a beginning, middle and an end. Nonetheless, no matter how thug-like I found the gangster-like repartee at times, it works. Readers will not be disappointed--as this tale unravels it reveals moments of evil and violence that rival in their chilling efficiency and inhumanity the workings of Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lector as he sprang in all his twisted glory on the horror/thriller literary scene in The Silence of the Lambs (Hannibal Lector). Larsson actually refreshes a genre that in its blatancy immunized readers to the horror or actual life.
Bottom line: Stieg Larsson's "The Girl Who Played With Fire" gives those fans of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" a huge book with more Blomkvist/Salander adventures. Focusing on the exoneration of Salander for present day murders that link to her past, the reader is in for a treat as some crucial information about her personal history is revealed in the denouement. Great read and satisfying second installment. Some sly critique of Sweden's social services from Larsson's perspective and many gruesome examples of man's abusiveness towards objects of control. Recommended.
Diana Faillace Von Behren
"reneofc"
Book Review: So Much To Love, So Much To Mildly Dislike
Summary: 4 Stars
Larsson's second book of the Millennium Trilogy, above all else, does not disappoint. Certainly there are parts that are not enjoyable, but the novel, on its face, doesn't ever betray you or let you down. Everything in it either creates tension or relieves it. Larsson's particular style makes sure you are thinking something and you need to decide how you feel about it, knowing full well that it might turn out the other way.
Lisbeth Salander is back, this time independently wealthy. The first third of the book devotes serious effort to recharacterizing her, Blomkvist, Berger, Bjurman, and all the rest. Unfortunately, I found Lisbeth's trip to Bermuda too long and describing new aspects of her personality (she allows herself to be seduced by a 16-year-old native?) without talking about the process of how she changed was poignant. She seemed removed from her old self, even though her actions in the second and third parts of the book are basically the same. The only new feeling is regret involving Miriam Wu, which is refreshing but is not emphasized. More on Blomkvist below.
The second act focuses a lot on police procedure, and is relatively interesting. Several bright characters appear, and the concurrent investigations of Armansky, Blomkvist, and Bublanski are fun to watch overlap and expound upon one another. Larsson plays a great, but common, card of emphasizing one character then removing them from the book for a long stretch, where the reader is constantly wondering what really happened and learning about facts in a roundabout fashion. It works well for him.
The confrontation at the warehouse seemed both exciting and off-kilter. In a way, I felt that the giant was "unfair" and that Roberto's cocky attitude let the reader take a serious look at what was being foreshadowed. Larsson really shines at the outcome.
At times, the book appears to be sponsored by Apple and IKEA. It is strange to me, especially with the technical jargon, because if you go back and reread book one, the computers are terribly outdated and no longer impressive. Continuing to refer to their specification guarantees that, sooner than later, readers will find the archaic references humorous. I don't think it detracts from the narrative, however. I merely regard it as curious.
Again in this book, my biggest problem is Blomkvist. Bleak and uninteresting, he is recharacterized as a blithe ladies man whose biggest problem is fame and women throwing themselves at him. Woe is he. No one is really interested in the relationship between him and Harriett. As he puts on his gumshoe hat in the second act, it looks like he actually might graduate into some kind of emotion, but again: nothing. I could see him not becoming involved in the Vanger case because he had no connection, but these events are closely tied to him and he barely reacts. At the end, Salander reveals that there is actually nothing to solve at all, and all his efforts merely confirm what she knew the whole time. It's frustrating to watch a character get so much face time but basically get ignored for another 300 pages.
A couple other assorted issues with the book:
1. If you're an investigative reporter, or even a grad student, about to blow the doors off a major scandal, get some folks fired and probably a few others sent to prison, it really can't be surprising that violence might ensue. You may want to consider basic protective measures. Then Blomkvist attempts to go after them armed only with a can of mace? Smart.
2. You can't flip a page in the second act without a police officer calling Lisbeth retarded. OKAY. WE GET IT. At times the psychologist reports get mentioned once a paragraph. It's like being beaten with a fish.
3. I guess Larsson heard that everyone thought the epilogue of the first book was too long, and decided to remove the second book's denouement as punishment. The sequel preparation to book one was obvious, but this might as well be a "To be continued..." page. Golly, I wonder who will take over Berger's spot at Millennium? I sure have heard a lot about this Camilla girl! Durrrrrr...
Overall, I have to give the book four stars, even though it probably only deserves three. Lisbeth is an extremely fun character, even though she can (almost) do no wrong. The rest of the cast, besides an extremely vibrant, psychotic portrayal of Bjurman, seem blurry at best, and I really wish Larsson would have finished the book rather than take the cheap route to getting me to buy book three. Doesn't mean I won't buy it immediately, though... :)
Book Review: A Wonderful Feminist Book!
Summary: 1 Stars
Let me get straight to the point. It is unlikely many readers will pick this up without having read THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, the first book in this trilogy by Stieg Larsson. (If you are one such person, put this book down and pick up TGWTDT first.) How does this book compare to its predecessor?
Not very well, I am afraid.
The bare plot involving a triple murder, an illegal sex ring and main character Lisbeth Salander's mysteriously alluded to background, could have been woven into an intriguing thriller. But it is almost impenetrably bogged down with so many unnecessary characters that the plot gets buried underneath the act of simply trying to keep one's scorecard straight.
Alas, that is not the locus of THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE's main troubles. More problematic is that I have never read a book more filled with clear contempt, hostility and antipathy towards men in my life. It is so over the top as to be almost beyond description.
Oh, but did I not mention an illegal sex trade above? What was the author to do? Make them look like Boy Scouts? But the problem is far more widespread than this. Even male characters that have nothing to do with the sex trade are just scumbags to the core. Certain male characters are introduced, it would seem, for no other purpose than to portray men poorly. It would be difficult to overstate the extremity of this literary drive-by.
Indeed, with the exception of Mikael Blomkvist, almost every male character is not merely defective, but extremely so. Typical for this mentality, when a female character hates men, it is always due to some external reason that portrays them sympathetically, such as past abuse by a man. But when male characters hate women, it is because . . . well, just because. It is ontological in nature (see, Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture for a good analysis of this phenomenon in pop culture).
Even more telling of the author's contempt for other men can be seen in his portrayal of those few men who might actually be referred to as the 'good guys.' All are either laughably ineffective and, in a literary version of a feminist wish fulfillment, need women to physically protect them (in a particularly illuminating example, a world class boxer is saved from getting beaten to death in a physical fight by a woman with broken ribs, a broken nose and other serious bodily harm, who is able to knock the big, bad man out to save the good guy's life) or instead are merely pathetic (Erika Berger's husband, who jovially wishes his wife a good time when she explicitly tells him, as she often does, that she will not be coming home that night and instead will be sharing the bed of another man).
Not surprisingly for anyone familiar with the mindset of those males `enlightened' about the oppression of women, the book is filled with women kicking the groins of, shooting, and generally committing other acts of violence against men. But hey? The men are all scumbags, aren't they? They deserve it.
Independent of the above, this book is weak for another reason. Larsson has made Lisbeth Salander simply too ridiculous to take seriously. In the first book, Larsson gave Salander a photographic memory, a trait that makes her truly an act of fiction given that this does not exist in non-mentally handicapped adults. Here, we learn of Salander's other intellectual gifts, ones that are so preposterous that I have no choice but to use the word `ridiculous' once again, in order to describe them properly.
Stieg Larsson, like every male feminist I have ever encountered (and I know he explicitly considered himself to be one), no doubt thought of himself as enlightened. And, again like every male feminist I have encountered, believed it his role to enlighten the rest of us, especially us other men. In fact, Larsson does nothing to illuminate any issues about violence against women, but does a wonderful job instead of illuminating the degree to which some men have serious problems with their own masculinity. His attempt to bludgeon us with an ideological agenda has turned what could have been a very good book into a hunk of junk.