The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
by Stieg Larsson
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Book Reviews of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Book Review: This novel left me cold
Summary: 2 Stars
Beneath the icy surface of this novel, something is stirring.
A mystery. Yes, a disappearance. On an island off the coast of Stockholm, accessible only by one bridge, a teenage girl has disappeared. The man hired to look into this mystery (the Swedish equivalent of Hercule Poirot, perhaps), is Mikael Blomqvist, an investigative financial reporter in his forties, who specializes in exposing sleaze and corruption for a magazine he co-owns with his married lover.
The only problem is: this is what they call a "cold case." Harriet Vanger went missing forty years ago, and her great uncle, an elderly industrial magnate called Henrik Vanger, believes she was murdered. He has obsessed over it for years, and now wants our dashing Blomqvist to find out who did it.
So far, so good. After numerous cups of coffee (which recur throughout the story - I began to worry that Blomqvist was over-caffeinated, as well perhaps as over-sexed), our hero moves into a small house on the island, and begins to methodically sift through old family records, photographs and the like. He "powers up his iBook." References to computers also pop up regularly; one paragraph begins: "Unsurprisingly she set her sights on the best available alternative: the new Apple PowerBook G4/1.0 GHz in an aluminium case with a PowerPC 7451 processor with an AltiVec Velocity Engine..." You get the picture.
Blomqvist is unaware that he is being investigated by the eponymous tattooed girl, Lisbeth Salander. While Blomqvist begins to delve into the murky family history of the Vanger clan (sleeping with one of them en route, for no particular reason), Salander is doing investigative work for a security company. She is good at finding out people's secrets, and her methods are ruthless; she is a computer hacker - so, more technological references. Eventually, she crosses paths with our hero and they combine forces. At times Salander is almost appealing; we are told of her troubled childhood. Mostly, she hides behind a kind of defensive shield. Her defenses are only down when she is alone with Blomqvist, who seems to be a magnet for women - one wonders how/why. Her deepest expression of feeling is: "I like having sex with you."
It is cold. Did I mention that already? The bitter cold of a Swedish winter seeps into the narrative, the stilted conversations, the string of sexual encounters - some of them pleasant enough, others violent and abusive. As Blomqvist and Salander embark on their pursuit of the missing Harriet, they find corruption and intrigue, bitter family feuds and scandals. There are plenty of Vangers to get to know. Many of them still live on the island and come and go at all hours of the night and day. One is a recluse, the other an ex-Nazi. One is a "firebrand," though we hardly get to know her. Most of the Vangers hate/avoid/ignore the existence of at least one other member of the clan. Blomqvist has a tough job ahead of him, and there are many twists that will appeal to the dedicated mystery lover.
I confess that I used to love mystery novels, of the old-fashioned kind. If this is the new breed of mystery novel, then it literally leaves me cold. About half way through the book I realized I simply did not care A) who killed Harriet Vanger or B) whether Blomqvist and Salander lived happily ever after. I remain puzzled by the glowing reviews on the sleeve of the hardcover from the likes of Michael Oondatje.
I guess I will have to go back to Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. Problem is, I've read them all.
Book Review: Life's too short to waste time on this book
Summary: 1 Stars
OK, this book really irritated me. Bottom line: I don't understand why The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is such a mainstream hit.
My only conclusion is to believe that people who love this book have not read many good mysteries.
I prefer mysteries to any other kind of books and I have already read 17 this summer. I just finished The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and - because the world is filled with so many really good mysteries - I absolutely cannot recommend this one.
I expected a lot from this best seller and, as you can tell, I was sorely disappointed. I wanted to quit so many times but I kept going because I kept hoping it would get better (and because my book club is reading it).
It did get better toward the end but not enough to warrant wading through all the stuff in the first 75% of the book.
What turned me off wasn't the distastefulness of the violence and sexual sadism or the fact that it contained two completely different stories.
The book just simply dragged. It was tedious and filled with lots of information (including the exhaustive Vanger family history) that was not essential to the story.
And the author didn't develop the characters enough for me to even care about them. I did come to care a little bit about the girl with the dragon tattoo because she was such a spitfire toward the bad guys, but I didn't care enough about her to make the book worth reading.
As for the mystery itself - (SPOILER ALERT) - it was obvious to me from the very beginning what had happened to Harriet because of the flowers sent annually to Vanger.
The end of the book gets pretty good but isn't worth what you have to wade through to get to it. And I really didn't like the very end.
I decided to read some of the reviews published on Amazon and was flabbergasted.
One person wrote, "The story moves with lightening speed."
Huh? The first half of the book is painfully slow and tedious and the pace doesn't pick up until near the end.
One said, "It was impossible to put down."
What?! I had to force myself to pick up the book each day.
One person wrote, "It will have you hanging on the edge of your seat" and another described it as "utterly stunning." Really?!
Another said, "Lisabeth is unforgettable, unlike most characters that populate mystery thrillers. There is such depth here."
Hello! Hasn't anybody ever read Elizabeth George? Talk about real depth!
Luckily, I found others who shared my opinion.
"... we're talking hundreds and hundreds of pages of numbingly dull back story that brackets the middle where something actually happens."
"... the writing is "cliché-ridden prose"
"The title of the book is misleading since it refers to the hero's sidekick and not the actual central character, who is a one-dimensionally valiant reporter for a financial magazine who is irresistible to women."
"There is an exhaustive back story developed of the Vanger family which is unnecessary, but takes up ALOT of space in the book"
"The author goes into excruciating detail about meaningless nonsense that has nothing to do with the story."
"There are moments of genuine suspense and excitement, but just not enough of a pay-off at the end."
So, I say, "Skip this book!"
Book Review: Hot new thriller by a tragically lost author
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" grabbed my attention because it was written by a Swedish author, Stieg Larsson, and deals with a complex journalistic story/dectective investigation/sex scandal set in Sweden. And since I am half Swedish, this was a slam dunk for me to buy. It turns out that Larsson, a well-known (in Europe) science-fiction writer and editor, was also a passionate writer about Nazis, neo-Nazis and other skinhead-type groups in his part of the world. He edited a magazine called "Expo," and received many death threats. In the meantime, he wrote some manuscripts that had nothing to do with science fiction, called the "Millennenium" triology, for his own amusement. Amazing.
One day, he dropped off the three manuscripts at a publishing company (things must be so much easier in Sweden). Editors realized they had some gems. That was 2000. In 2004, Larsson died of a massive heart attack at age 54 and may have lived long enough to see his first novel "Men Who Hate Women" ("The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" in America) published in his native language. One thing is for certain. The "Millenium" series will be the only thing he will have produced. It's a horrible loss of talent.
But what a book the first installment is! An engaging 40-year-old reporter, Mikael Blomqvist loses a libel trial to a noted financial schnook and offers no defense at the trial. His magazine, "Millennium" looks like it's underwater, until he gets a mysterious offer to move north--way north--to solve a mystery in an island town in Sweden. There are plenty of details that some people may find tedious, but I hung on every word, for this section of Sweden was just a few miles north of where my grandfather lived, and the descriptions were exactly right. Blomqvist meets the bizare members of the Vader family, ostensibly to write a family history. However, he really is there to solve a 30-some year-old murder. It becomes an open secret and everyone has a pet theory they want to try out on him. Or some avoid him entirely.
Meanwhile, back in Stockholm a battered and abused young woman with Asperger's syndrome fights against the public guardian system while doing brilliant private investigation work for a local security firm.She's odd, but brilliant, and it takes a while for people to realize that just because she's not polite or sweet, she's not useful or tremendously gifted. We'll skip over the scenes of sadistic sex she has to endure freeing herself from her government guardian, and move on to the fact that quite naturally her work puts her in touch with Blomqvist.
The two begin to work in concert. She indulges in some brilliant hacking. Magic ensues. (My husband assures me that what she does is not feasible.) And many secrets spill out, some extremely gory. But things don't all end up happily. Blomqvist, by nature of his affableness, manages to involve himself in too many romances. Really, this guy gets more going on in the sack that anyone could imagine, especially that close to the Arctic Circle. However, it leads to some broken hearts and disturbed behavior, much of which will be addressed in the next book, "The Girl Who Ate Fire."
It's a novel for anyone who loves a puzzler, some romance, and great character development. If you can handle the gross stuff (and even my father took it in stride), it's a great read.
Book Review: Predictably boring!
Summary: 1 Stars
Ok, sometimes I have luck with bestsellers and sometimes I don't. I forgot to bring a book to read for my flight and so got this book by Stieg Larsson at Hudson Books at the airport, where most of what they have in stock are "best-sellers."
I don't understand why this book is such a huge phenomenon.
Firstly, I don''t care much for Larsson's writing style, which I find to be amateurish. Perhaps the translator is to blame here, but nonetheless, the outcome is very flat, with little depth. Larsson spends too much time -- almost half of the book -- giving an unnecessary and clichéd introduction to the characters before even getting to the plot of the story. And through all of this, the dialogue between characters is so painstakingly surficial.
Secondly, all the characters are so predictable, even in their strengths and flaws. The protagonist, Mikael Blomkvist, is a financial journalist and co-founder of Millenium, an investigative-reporting magazine. At times, I got the sense that the author fantasized about being his lead character -- after all, Blomkvist is not only famous and successful, but a womanizer who seems to charm and bed every woman he meets. Women fall madly in love with him, finding him to be unlike every other man they've met, even their spouses. (Insert sigh and eye-roll here.) Being the picture of every man's fantasy in this unrealistic way, Blomkvist lacks depth as a character.
Sharing the spotlight with Mikael in solving the mystery is Lisbeth Salander, after whom the book was titled. Predictably, she's portrayed to be the stereotype of a girl with tattoos -- she's an outcast, wears leather, has piercings, rides a motorcycle, and has issues with people. She's also hacker-smart, and has the ability to get into anyone's computer within a few seconds. For such an intelligent rebel, she allows herself to be sexually abused and raped in the book twice -- even though she eventually gets her revenge on her attacker. While reading these parts, I felt that the attacks were exploitive and even unneccessary. It also felt distant in emotion, and was obvious a man wrote it.
The mystery of the story is as such: Henrik Vanger, a millionaire CEO of a family company, hires Blomkvist to solve the mystery of his beloved niece's sudden disappearance some 40 years ago, in the 60s. The solution is not a suprise or even a climax, and the lead-in to it is boring and slow. Also, on the track to solving the mystery, another one is solved, revealing a serial-killer of women (Henrik Vanger's nephew, brother to the missing niece) who hates women (apparently, this problem of misandry in Sweden was what the author wanted to make people aware of.)
If anything, I find this book to exploit misandry more than bring awareness to it as a problem that's wrong in society. Despite Larsson's attempt to show that the heroine of the book is this "girl with the dragon tattoo," I got the feeling that he got pleasure from writing about every aspect of man's upper hand on woman in his story, and that the form of a novel helped him disguise this. Just on pure plot, characters, and writing style alone, though, I would say that this book was a big disappointment.
Book Review: A Classic Murder Mystery With A Modern Twist
Summary: 4 Stars
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo had been on my "to-read" list for over a year when I saw it featured on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. Any book that makes it to the cover of an entertainment magazine will certainly gain my interest. Pushing the dozens of other books aside to make room for Stieg Larsson's debut, I tackled the murder mystery love story investigative journalism monster that has caught the fascination of millions of readers the world over.
Upon first exploration of the The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, I could not understand the fascination. The first half of the book reads slowly and even qualifies as boring sometimes. One could argue that a murder mystery requires the appropriate set-up: introduction to the characters involved, establishing motives and history, etc. But Dragon Tattoo takes this concept to the extreme.
Mikael Blomkvist, a discredited journalist, is hired by Henrik Vanger, a wealthy industrialist, to solve the mystery of his niece's disappearance decades earlier. The circumstances around the disappearance have been thoroughly investigated without resolution, and for decades Henrik has made it his personal obsession to solve the murder, even though no body has ever been found.
Blomkvist, having been recently fired from his job as publisher of the financial magazine he helped to establish for a libel conviction, reluctantly accepts the position under the pretense that once he finishes the assignment, he will be given information that will help him bring down one of Sweden's financial mogul, exposing him as a gangster. Over the course of the next year, he delves deeper into the Vanger family's sordid history, filled with odd obsessions, shady characters, and a number of family members who would prefer to leave the mystery unsolved.
Blomkvist enlists the help of Lisbeth Salander, a morally questionable warden of the court, a social outcast and recluse with a talent for hacking into the most complicated computer networks and gathering information. Salander prepared a detailed report on Mikael for the Vanger family prior to hiring Blomkvist for the job, and Mikael is impressed with the detail and intricacy by which she covered her assignment. Together, the two work tirelessly on finding new details in the Vanger disappearance and ultimately establish a more intimate relationship.
Midway into the novel, the story really takes off. Muddling through the erroneous details and character portraits at the beginning is necessary, but Larsson could certainly have presented all of the same details in a more exciting fashion. More than once, I found myself frustrated in the first two hundred pages, often reading only a chapter before putting the book down. Larsson has a talent for creating characters that are worthy of the reader's hatred toward them. And as is expected, the story takes several intriguing turns as the reader is teased into thinking one obviously evil character is guilty when, in fact, the more subliminally pathetic characters are truly the more intriguing.
Overall, Dragon Tattoo is a worthwhile read, also worthy of its two sequels. One can only hope that the remaining two novels in the trilogy read more quickly than the first.