The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium Trilogy)
by Stieg Larsson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Stieg LarssonTranslator: Reg Keeland
Edition: Perfect Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published); Swedish (Translation)
Format: Print
Published: 2009-06-23
ISBN: 0307454541
Number of pages: 600
Publisher: Vintage Crime / Black Lizard
Product features:
- the girl who played with fire mystery books thriller
Book Reviews of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium Trilogy)
Book Review: Women in Crisis: Are the Swedes that Bad?
Summary: 3 Stars
One of the fascinating aspects of Larsson's book is the thematic thread of female sexual and physical abuse in Sweden conveyed through statistics that mark the opening of many chapters. These statistics not only imply the prevalence of female assault and molestation, but also the consequent fear of women to charge their assailants. These stats, unfortunately, suggest a society that is derelict in its responsibility as well as possibly misogynistic to half of its population. From the beginning of the novel there is a hint of a mysterious female death decades earlier. The book proceeds to the libel trial of a noteworthy Swedish journalist and his subsequent conviction. After a slow start, the book picks up and it is truly a page turner until the last fourth when it is bogged down in unnecessary detail, impeded by stylistic devices that don't work and slow down the narrative thrust, and encumbered by unbelievable and excessive twists in plot.
In fact, one might argue, Larsson has two books squeezed into one and as a result, he belabors the vengeance story after originally developing the murder mystery. Consequently, the book attempts too much; the casualty is believability and characterization. Larsson is a good storyteller, but for some of us who like fully drawn characters and a consistently believable storyline, the book does not deliver. Finally, one asks whether the Swedes do fail to protect females and whether their rumored stance of moral relativity is, in fact, true. A Scandinavian by heritage myself, I doubt that is true of the country as a whole, yet Larsson's book states female abuse is very pervasive in Sweden. All in all, "The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo" is a loose conglomeration of every sensational theme and subject one could hope for in crime fiction. As such, it is entertaining enough, but it rambles incessantly, is weakly crafted and in the final analysis, it is not particularly illuminating. While it is not formula fiction, it is certainly not literary or psychologically driven fiction. It is what it is: a good read until the last when it falls down in all categories.
One notices from the beginning that the prose is colorless. This is not especially off-putting because the storyline moves quickly, and the subject is interesting, as are the characters, who are disparate and colorful. Blomkvist, a bold journalist, arouses one's imagination by his seeming thoughtfulness at the beginning. His adulterous lover and colleague, patrician beauty, Erika Berger, is intriguing as well. Then place into the mix a tattooed, seemingly psychopathic young woman from a mysterious home situation whose anti-social temperament is legendary, and you have an interesting mix. Compound that with a mysterious disappearance of a young woman forty years ago, and all the elements of a gripping read are set in motion.
The young woman with the anti-social bent is a freelance investigator whose aid Blomkvist seeks in his investigation into the disappearance of Harriet Vanger, a relative of one of Sweden's most successful entrepreneurs. Blomkvist, a lothario of sorts as well as a capable journalist, is hired by Henrik Vanger to write the Vanger Family biography and surreptitiously determine what happened to Harriet. Sapped of his own money and vulnerable to bankruptcy after his conviction, Blomkvist nevertheless repeatedly insists that he will not continue the project of investigating Harriet's disappearance, even though the offer itself seems preposterously generous and his repeated threats to discontinue the project totally unbelievable since Vanger has also offered as compensation to expose Blomkvist's enemy and thus restore the journalist's erstwhile reputation, support the magazine Blomkvist has caused to go defunct, and pay him up to five million dollars for his investigative efforts. Unbelievably, even after he's hired, Blomkvist champs at the bit, repeatedly setting himself up to be fired or to become a target of others' malice. Thus, his behavioral calculations appear juvenile. Moreover, his amorous relationships with Erika Berger and Lisbeth Salander strike the reader as the "stuff" of male fantasy and therefore, somewhat ridiculous. We can accept all this in the name of a good story, however, as long as the storyline holds up.
And for quite a while it does. I found myself wading through much of the genealogical detail, a testament to the fact that my curiosity was adequately piqued. I found Salander's character interesting because she is stunningly unconventional. A child of undefined parentage, her lack of communication and her obsession with exposing others' secrets, is, if not fascinating, at least interesting. The love story of Erika Berger and Mikael Blomkvist fades into the background as the book progresses, and Lisbeth Salander and Blomkvist become close. While this is not unbelievable, it doesn't ring true either. Still, one reads on because Salanger's feral presence holds our attention, even if we don't quite believe her and are not allowed enough glimpses into her personality through internal passages or dialogue to identify with her or understand her motives. She remains a cipher from beginning to end -- somewhat fascinating in her anti-social manner, nebulous past and ambiguous connection to her dying mother.
The book is conveyed through multiple viewpoints, haphazardly delivered, as if parts of the original manuscript were truncated in the editing process. Large parts of the novel are thus snippets from various points of view, but for the most part the novel switches from Lisbeth Salanger's point of view to Mikael Blomkvist's, sometimes awkwardly. At other times, the point of view is inside a character's head who until then has not narrated a single paragraph. For the most part the book "tells" rather than "shows," but the narrative continues to move and is captivating in its portrayal of bizarre subjects and the various conventional and pathological personalities of the Vanger family. A detective at heart, I found much of the plot development entertaining and suspenseful, if in many places, contrived and unbelievable. Larsson provides past information and characterization by summarizing, but he avoids boring the reader because the facts themselves are unusual.
In the end most of the characters are incompletely developed. They have little resonance beyond their parts in a complicated, tawdry scenario. They are not nuanced, and one can easily forget them, except perhaps Salander whose weirdness is captivating, if not plumbed enough to resonate after putting the book down. Erika Berger, who starts out as flamboyant and daring, recedes into the woodwork and is forgotten until her intimacy with Bomkvist is realized by Salander and Salander as a result reevaluates her own intimacy with Blomkvist. This is another unbelievable aspect of the book since if there was ever a pit bull female, it's Lisbeth Salander. However, she merely fades away after her grand epiphany that Blomkvist and Berger will forever be close in a way she could never prevent.
The last section uses the technique of emails to further the plot. This does not work and makes the section laborious. Moreover, the last chapters are bogged down in the details of Blomkvist's reestablishing his journalistic preeminence. In this part the sense of suspense has dwindled and one skims it for the plot development, the characters having lost their abilities to interest.
Finally, the conclusion to the mystery and the device of the annually posted flowers don't work because by the end of the novel you question why the sender wouldn't have more accurately anticipated Henrik Vanger's reaction. Most aspects of the disappearance mystery and Blomkvist's attempts to revive his journalistic career just don't jive. The reader is left with a sense of antipathy for the family and its various personalities. One has the sense of a stale society when all the characters are incompletely drawn or stereotypical in the facts surrounding them and their perhaps too defined reactions. In the end, oOne has the sense she is watching an elaborate puppet show with an equally elaborate and colorful setting, but the elements don't coalesce into a whole; they are disparate and episodic, a mishmash of sensationalism and hot topics.
The book is a good read. Some of the characters are interesting. The prose is straightforward and without craft, but the subject is absorbing, as are all disappearances of young women. The idea of international business conspiracies as well as unsavory business practices are hot topics, as are computer schemes and hacking in general. My guess is that Larsson is a man of many interests and abilities, but LITERARY fiction is not his expertise, and so this book is not such. It is well paced, well told crime fiction. Lacking in psychological insight, it does not grip me enough. I want a tighter story, one with more deeply drawn characters, and one with implications about life. Since a good read is what most people like, this book deserves to have a widespread audience. Fine, as long as people don't equate it to the works of Alice Siebold, for example, who is equally grim, or A. Conan Doyle, who has a deeper sense of mystery and psychological intrigue.
Characterization, Characterization, Characterization...... Flush it out. Out ... Out... And don't belabor the points. In the end don't propose the women/abuse proposition, if you're not going to develop it anymore than by revealing the crimes of a couple of creeps. The statistics of Swedish female abuse quoted in this novel are startling, but are they true? Alas, Larsson did not complete that aspect of the novel as he did not provide insight into character, theme and even plot. The big question in the book remains, "Why?" Sure men fear and even hate women. However, in this book that idea is not sufficient to explain anything, particularly motive and certainly not character. Larsson is a good storyteller, and that can take you far indeed. Not far enough for me, though. Unless, of course, he implied some answers to the "WHY?". So in the absence of such implications I shall reserve my opinions of Swedish males and Swedish society. The case for the mistreatment of women in Sweden has not been made.
Marjorie Meyerle
Summary of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium Trilogy)
An international publishing sensation, Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo combines murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue into one satisfyingly complex and entertainingly atmospheric novel.Harriet Vanger, a scion of one of Sweden's wealthiest families disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together they tap into a vein of unfathomable iniquity and astonishing corruption.
Amazon Best of the Month, September 2008: Once you start The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, there's no turning back. This debut thriller--the first in a trilogy from the late Stieg Larsson--is a serious page-turner rivaling the best of Charlie Huston and Michael Connelly. Mikael Blomkvist, a once-respected financial journalist, watches his professional life rapidly crumble around him. Prospects appear bleak until an unexpected (and unsettling) offer to resurrect his name is extended by an old-school titan of Swedish industry. The catch--and there's always a catch--is that Blomkvist must first spend a year researching a mysterious disappearance that has remained unsolved for nearly four decades. With few other options, he accepts and enlists the help of investigator Lisbeth Salander, a misunderstood genius with a cache of authority issues. Little is as it seems in Larsson's novel, but there is at least one constant: you really don't want to mess with the girl with the dragon tattoo. --Dave Callanan
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