The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
by Stieg Larsson
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Book Reviews of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Book Review: Men who hate "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"
Summary: 1 Stars
Shrug. Sorry, that's the best I can muster after finishing Swedish author Stieg Larsson's serial bestseller, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo". I know, phenomenon like this tend to produce tsunami-wave cycles of popularity, of crest and trough, of adulation and backlash, and back again, pushing opinions to the extremes and drowning out the middle ground. Does anyone find the Twilight series, "OK, I guess"? How many people finished "The Da Vinci Code" and thought, "Ho hum"?
You can't doubt "Girl" and the other two books that make up the Millennium trilogy are very much at the peak of the crest now. Last month Amazon announced Mr Larsson had become the first author to sell over one million e-books for the Kindle. The Huffington Post reports that sales of trilogy exceeded 30 million worldwide. But after wading through 500-plus pages of turgid exposition, choppy dialogue and wet characters, the most I can say for this book is, It's OK, I guess.
Ho hum.
I'll admit, it is refreshing to read a novel set in such a little-known nation, and there's no denying the old-world charm that rises like perfume from place-names like the Furusund Strait, Arholma, Gotgatan and Gamla stan. True, some of the cultural references may be hard to follow, such as those to Sweden's interest rate crises in the early 90s, but in a way that kind of adds to the enjoyment of experiencing something new and foreign. But that's just about the only nice thing I can say about the book.
Much of the hype surrounding the Millennium series focuses on its characters, and they are the book's first disappointment, but not its worst. Theoretically, the hero of the story is political/financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist, but the publisher knew what they were about when they changed the title to focus on his partner, dragon-tattooed computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (the original Swedish title translates as "Men Who Hate Women"). It's undoubtedly a smart publicity move, but sadly Salander, billed as a Goth-punk Bourne with an extra X chromosome, instead comes across as yet another fantasy figure, the kind of kick-ass girl introverts dream of dating, one whose real turn-on is diffidence. "Dammit, he had treated her like a human being" she thinks to herself before hopping into bed with Blomkvist.
If Salander is a disappointment, Blomkvist is a disaster. His defining characteristic is passivity. He's accused of libel by a shady businessman, but refuses to defend himself, and is disgraced as a result. Luckily, he's then hired by octogenarian industrialist Henrik Vanger to investigate the case of a child that disappeared 40 years previous, but for much of the book he manages to do little but drink coffee and have sex. Blomkvist's only other character trait, you see, appears to be his alarmingly omnivorous sexual appetite. He sleeps with every single major female character in the book, a list that includes a woman half his age (Salander), the (married) editor-in-chief of the magazine he works for, as well as the (married but separated) niece of Henrik Vanger, a woman much closer to 60 than 16. For Mr Larsson, a journalist, to write about a journalist having such success with the ladies, will probably a too-transparent bit of wish fulfillment for some readers.
The other attraction the novel offers is its choice of themes. Here, the situation is somewhat better. The overriding theme, as the Swedish title suggests, is violence against women, especially sexual violence. Each part of the book begins with a grim statistic such as "48% of the women in Sweden have been subjected to violence by a man", and this carries over into Blomkvist and Salander's investigation, as they turn up evidence (after much coffee-fuelled bed-hopping) that someone in Vanger's family harbors a serious grudge against the opposite sex.
Mr Larsson has other irons in the fire as well. There's his disgust with the cozy ties between financial journalists and their subjects, his hatred of both Sweden's unrepentant Nazi movement and abuses of power, and perhaps more oddly, his airy dismissal of the role of stock exchanges. To be sure, Mr Larsson's rage is evidently heartfelt, though Blomkvist's sudden outbursts against these targets feel as though they come from the author rather than the character. Still, these doses of raw emotion help to enliven an otherwise lifeless plot.
The real drawback of the book, you see, is the positively somnolent progress from plot point to plot point. The convoluted backstory could probably have been dealt with in a fraction of the space. We learn a lot about the Vanger family but little that relates to the case. There's a buildup of evidence but no corresponding narrowing of suspects, leaving the reader with nothing to get involved in, but instead watching the investigation at arm's length. Just when the novel feels like it might be suddenly getting interesting--a Dan Brown mystery for grown-ups--Mr Larsson suddenly shifts gears, reveals the culprit and then just as quickly kills him off. The remaining 100 pages are an entirely unnecessary epilogue in which Blomkvist gets his revenge on the man who framed him in the libel case.
Partly, I suspect, this long-windedness is the result of the book's rather unique genesis. As most of you will know, Mr Larsson died of a heart attack shortly after delivering the manuscripts of the series to his publisher (this wouldn't sound nearly so eerie if he'd written, say, a work of adult erotica, but hey). So bang went any chance of give-and-take between editor and writer as they sought to hone the work into the finished product. Would you want to delete a dead man's words? No? So that's very much what it feels like we're getting, a raw, unvarnished manuscript, one showing lots of promise but lots of rough edges, too.
Book Review: Stunning debut for Swedish novelist
Summary: 5 Stars
The first of a trilogy (Millennium), Swedish author and journalist Larsson's debut thriller succeeds on so many levels it's hard to know where to begin.
First off, it's an absolute page-turner. But the characters are so fascinating and the clear, understated writing so graceful, you are going to want to savor it. A dilemma.
The plot is complex, involving corrosive family secrets, gruesome serial killings, business chicanery on a grand scale, journalistic ethics and government paternalism. All of it seamlessly interwoven through the characters of the two protagonists.
As the book opens Mikael Blomqvist, an investigative business journalist and co-owner of the business magazine "Millennium," has just been convicted of libeling powerful financier Hans-Erik Wennerstrom, sentenced to a few months jail time and fined a crippling sum. His struggling magazine has lost its credibility and Blomqvist will likely lose his lovely apartment as well as his livelihood.
Meanwhile, Lisbeth Salander, a fierce, tiny, anorexic-looking, punk-dressing, tattooed genius investigator whose ferocious independence belies her fragile appearance, has just completed a report on Blomqvist for the security firm that employs her. She's filleted his life - ethics, sex life, finances, prospects - and delivered a suspicion of her own on the libel case.
The report goes to childless Henrik Vanger, wealthy patriarch of an insular, squabbling family dynasty, a decayed giant in steel, mining, textiles and more. Henrik wants to hire Blomqvist to write the Vanger family history - a tale rife with Nazis, batterers and drunks - as a pretext to investigating the disappearance of his beloved niece Harriet in 1966 at age 16.
It's a "locked island" mystery. The Hedeby Island family compound in the remote north of Sweden connects to the mainland by one bridge. It was blocked by an accident. All boats were accounted for. Which leaves about 40 suspects, most of them family, most of them cleared or deceased. But each year on his birthday Vanger receives a pressed flower - a taunting, macabre reminder of the pressed flowers Harriet used to give him. The murderer - Vanger is convinced she has been murdered - is still alive.
So why does Blomqvist take this hopeless case? The money and quiet isolation are attractive but Vanger sweetens the deal by promising to deliver incontrovertible proof of Wennerstrom's criminality.
Blomqvist, shocked by the intense cold and meager winter light of Hedeby, moves into a guesthouse and begins to meet the family. He falls into a dalliance with one of Harriet's contemporaries, daughter of the last Vanger Nazi, a 90-plus recluse who still lives on the island, sidesteps Harriet's ancient viper of a mother - her father died in a drunken accident the year before Harriet disappeared - and has a congenial dinner with Martin Vanger, current CEO of the Vanger companies and Harriet's brother.
Meanwhile, Salander needs all her considerable skills to reclaim her life from an abusive state-appointed guardian. The narrative swings between Blomqvist and Salander and while the Blomqvist part is absorbing and intricate, the Salander part is violent, scary, and sharply humorous.
Eventually Blomqvist makes an unexpected breakthrough and needs a researcher. Who better than the person who put together such an expert dossier on him? And here the book really comes together. Apart, Blomqvist and Salander are fine individuals, quite capable of engaging our attention (well, Salander is electrifying), together they are fascinating.
Blomqvist's perceptiveness blooms and Salander's edgy brilliance shines. Where others are baffled by Salander or tend to underestimate her, Blomqvist recognizes Aspergers and spots talents that Salander has kept secret all her life. As Salander lets some of her defenses fall, a partnership develops that allows leaps of deduction and intuition, working up to a nail-biting conclusion and a denouement that kick-starts a new set of problems - to be faced in the second book, "The Girl Who Played with Fire," which, sadly, will not be available until next year.
More sadly, Larsson did not live to see the success of his trilogy - which is already a bestseller in non-English speaking Europe. (Why the English translations are being published so much later than German, French, Norwegian, Italian, etc. is a mystery). An anti-right-wing activist and journalist (perhaps a bit like Blomqvist), he died in 2004 of a heart attack at age 50, just after delivering all three manuscripts.
With its Swedish sensibilities, northern atmosphere (especially in below frigid winter), and riveting characters, this book is for anyone who has ever read a crime story.
Book Review: A Surprise Book Group Choice
Summary: 5 Stars
Our book group chose to read Stieg Larsson's popular novel, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." Several other of the many Amazon reviewers of this title appear to have come to the book in the same way. I had grown bored with the DVD based on the novel and thus had little expectation for the book. Our book group usually does not choose thrillers. But I was surprised because the novel is indeed a page-turner. I couldn't put it down.
There are at least three interrelated stories in this yarn of a book which is primarily set in Sweden early in the 21st Century. The two major characters are Michael Blomkvist, a liberal financial journalist who aims to expose corruption in large companies and Lisabeth Salander, the title character, a gifted but troubled young woman of 24 who is under the guardianship of the state but who is a whiz with computers and at investigation. As it progresses, much of the book involves the unlikely professional and personal relationships that develop between Blomkwist and Salander.
As the book opens, Blomkvist has just been sentenced to a short prison term for libeling a major industrial tycoon named Wennerstrom. (Libel laws obviously are much more stringent in Sweden than in the United States where this scenario whould have been most unlikely.) At the trial, for reasons that stay obscure for much of the book, Blomkvist declines to defend the accusations he had leveled against Wennestrom and loses his case and his reputation. He and Salander investigate the case further as the book proceeds.
The other mystery plot is much more interesting and well- developed. When he loses his libel case, Blomkvist is summoned to a remote island in northern Sweden by an aging industrialist named Vanger. Vanger offers to pay Blomkvist a substantial sum to investigate the disappearance of his young niece Harriet in 1965, nearly 40 years earlier. At that time, Harriet was a girl of 16. She disappeared mysteriously after a festival, when the attention of the island residents was diverted by an automobile crash on a bridge leading to the mainland. Vanger has spent much of his life, since Harriet's disappearance investigating how she died and who killed her. He has had no success. Blomkvist reluctantly becomes involved. As the story progresses, Salander comes to assist him in this investigation and in the separate investigation of Wennerstrom.
The story of Vanger is complex, chilling, and tawdry. It basically involves the entire Vanger family, many of whose members live on the island and dislike each other intensely. The investigation of Harriet and her fate take up most of the book.
The story is for the most part well-paced and carefully constructed. There is a large group of characters, including Blomkvist's married lady friend, the various Vangers, the Vanger's lawyer, and especially Salander.
As the book develops, the scene shifts from one character and place to another. Tension builds throughout, and the story can be readily followed with its twists and turns without getting confused. There are some chillingly evil scenes in this book.
The pace of the book flags towards the end. The Vanger-Harriet part of the story resolves substantially before the book concludes, and the focus of the story returns to Wennerstrom and his claimed financial manipulations and corruptions. This portion of the story is much less interesting than the companion story, and it drags on too long. It seemed to me anticlimactic. The Wennerstrom story and the Vagner-Harriet story both form the occasion for a good deal of preaching on the subjects of sexual exploitation and abuse and large capitalistic corruption and irresponsibility. Ordinarily, I am wary of books with these kinds of ideological preoccupations. But in this case the themes were integrated convincingly into the story the author had to tell. Thus, these themes did not interfere with my enjoyment of the book. I did not find the novel ideologically driven.
This was a long, riveting book, which I took up half-heartedly but found I could not put down. I am not sure that the remainder of the trilogy is for me, but I found this book fascination and well-worth the attention both that I gave it and that the book has received.
Robin Friedman
Book Review: Fantastic Book!
Summary: 5 Stars
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a multi-layered mystery that fascinates and enthralls. Swedish author Stieg Larsson ratchets the anxiety level to such an intense level that at one point I literally had to put the book down in mid-sentence and walk away for several hours until I had calmed down.
The book revolves around a classic locked-door mystery: in 1966 Harriet Vanger, the 16-year-old niece and surrogate daughter of Henrik Vanger, CEO of the Vanger Corporation, disappeared from Hedeby Island, a private island owned by the Vanger family. At the time of Harriet's disappearance the single bridge leading to the island was blocked by a major traffic accident that occupied most of the island's inhabitant's, meaning that Harriet is not missed at first. All boats--the only other way off the island--are all accounted for. Despite an exhaustive search, no trace of Harriet is ever found and she is presumed dead. Henrik, is convinced that Harriet has been murdered by a member of the Vanger family, a conviction that grows when, on his birthday he receives a pressed flower, dried and framed, mailed to him anonymously. Harriet had given him a pressed, dried and framed flower every birthday since she was eight years old. As this continues every year, Henrik's obsession with the missing Harriet grows until it consumes him, leaving little time or attention for business, particularly when the family seems determined to sink the family-owned corporation. He retires, leaving control of once powerful, now much diminished, Vanger Corporation to Martin, Harriet's brother.
Now, on his eighty-second birthday, after the receipt of yet another flower, with the finality of death approaching, Henrik decides to make one, last-ditch effort to solve the mystery of Harriet's murder. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, under the cover of writing a family history to conduct an investigation. At first blush, Blomkvist appears to be a poor choice: he has just been convicted of libel against Hans-Erik Wennerström, a powerful businessman. His reputation as a journalist been destroyed, the fine he has been assessed threatens to demolish his finances and a combination of the two is likely enough to bring down Millennium, the magazine he co-founded, co-owns and edits. He is also facing a prison as part of the verdict. Yet oddly enough, Blomkvist put on no defense.
The title-character is Lisbeth Salander, a freelance investigator for Milton Security. An unnerving bundle of contradictions: Lisbeth spent several years of her adolescence in a locked psychiatric ward. She is considered retarded and incompetent by the State and as a result was placed under a guardianship. In fact Lisbeth is a brilliant investigator who has demonstrated an uncanny talent in ferreting out other people's secrets--despite a pathological hatred for authority figures. She, or rather Milton Security, is hired by Henrik Vanger to investigate Mikael Blomkvist. Her job is abruptly ended when Blomkvist accepts Henrik's job offer, but by that point Lisbeth is intrigued by what she has already learned.
The stories of the Vanger family, Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander are interwoven, the past and the present coming together piece by piece until the final masterpiece is complete. The end result is too complex to compare it to a picture--it is more like a sculpture, something that you can turn this way and that, to look at from different angles to a different point of view. It is a novel that requires thinking about.
The good news is that this is the first in the Millennium trilogy. The bad news is that Stieg Larsson passed away in 2004, cutting short a truly remarkable and worthy life. His work makes clear that he was a man of ideals, although The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo gets across the issues--racism, violence against women--without being heavy handed about it. No surprise that he spent his career fighting against right-wing extremist and racism. For those interested, check out stieglarsson.com.
Book Review: Lacking a whole lot
Summary: 2 Stars
I wanted to like this book. It has a cool title (not so much in Swedish, coincidentally). For the most part it has been well-received. The back says things like "Don't even think about putting it down" and "Brilliantly written and totally gripping." Were we reading the same book? I mean, really? Because if not for the mildly engaging middle third of the book, it was a total snoozefest. There was lots of sex! But I digress...
Something that bothered me a lot, and it's more style points than anything else, is that it really needed an American translation, not an "English" one. I know where Stockholm is, but I couldn't say where any of the other cities mentioned are at so I felt detached from the setting. I didn't like reading Herr instead of Mister because I'm out-of-touch and uncultured tyvm. There were half-page scenes that added nothing to the story, which made me wonder why they were even stuck in. Of course, I now realize they could've been hooks for future stories in what was supposed to be a 10-book series.
The protagonist, Mikael Blomkvist, is about as boring as they come and as far as I can tell cut from the same mold as the author himself. Every woman wants to sex him up the moment they see him, and I had a hard time trying to understand why. Of course, the ensuing sex is so predictable it's almost farcical. I actually laughed out loud at one point. But that boring character goes hand-in-hand with his plotline, the who-done-it murder mystery that didn't get interesting until he started looking for clues. Prior to that, the reader is inundated with a family history that is painful to read.
Lisbeth (girl with the dragon tattoo) should've been the protagonist. She was the only character I gave half a damn about. It bothered me that she was a little too awesome though. I think a person could figured the same things out she did by being smart without needing a photographic memory...that she could be an ok hacker with hacker friends without being one of the best hackers in Sweden. Overpowered characters make me throw the BS flag. Sorry Lisbeth.
Antagonists? They're so easily dispatched by Lisbeth that the plot was trivialized.
I thought the whole mystery was decent with a bit of random shock value thrown in to make the story worthwhile reading. But all of that ends with 50 pages left to go, taking the poor reader back to the dull financial journalist drama that the book began with. I'm not sure how anyone could make that sort of stuff interesting. Seems fresh and original enough, but damn...needs more SOMETHING. Like action? Please?
Also too much irrelevant life narration: "He put on a pot of coffee and made himself two sandwiches. He had not eaten a proper meal all day, but he was strangely uninterested in food. He offered the cat a piece of sausage and some liverwurst. After drinking the coffee, he took the cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and opened the pack." Mmm, k. Bored now. Not so bad if it's occasional but it's not.
Larsson also had a lot of passages that tell instead of show. Case in point: "Blomkvist leaned back and pretended to be insulted, but he frowned when Berger made some cryptic remarks that might allude to his failings as a journalist but might also have applied to sexual prowess. Vanger tilted his head back and roared with laughter." Could he not think of a suitable joke to share with the reader? Because I really wanted to read it! He also needed to do a little POV work because he mixed it up in a few places -- me being picky, I know, but an editor should've caught that.
The last scene was really good. And there were a few with Lisbeth that stood out too, mainly her introduction and a few of the action scenes. But I felt like the main characters were too detached from the main plot and at any time they could just say "screw it, I'm done." Book over.
Two stars. Boring but easy to read. Better than Twilight.