The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
by Stieg Larsson
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Book Reviews of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Book Review: A worthwhile read.
Summary: 4 Stars
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson is one of the best reads so far this year. Like the books I've read by other non-American authors it is wordy. Reading Larsson's work was for me similar to reading Umberto Eco. Translated works can take just a bit of commitment, but like Eco's work, Larsson's novel is worth it. Then, of course, there are the Scandinavian names and the constant reference to the Kronor, the Swedish unit of money. For me none of this was a problem, it's just something you deal with when you read a translated work. Trust me, in the end the story makes it all worthwhile.
I also have to admit that I had a real difficult time getting through the early stages of the novel. Until I reached page 100, or there-a-bouts, I really thought that perhaps I'd made a huge mistake and thrown away $24.95 (less the discount). Well, I needn't have worried.
The Girl delivers on every level. Well written, with an intelligent plot that will keep you coming back, wonderful pacing, and great writing style, Larsson treats the reader to a memorable experience that will linger even after you turn the last page. Then there are the memorable characters such as Mikael Blomkvist, a magazine reporter and editor who is on his way to jail for supposedly printing slanderous material on a wealthy industrialist, or Lisabeth Salander, a troubled, tattooed and pierced young woman who is much more resourceful that her guardians or the courts are aware. Only her part-time employer Dragon Armansky appreciates Salander's research talents.
A nearly forty year old disappearance (murder????) of Harriet Vanger, a sixteen year old member of a wealthy Swedish family serves as the center piece of The Girl. There are other plot elements including greed, abuse of women on the most personal levels possible, dysfunctional families, and the list goes on. I won't give a way the ending, don't want to be a spoiler here, but suffice it to say that you'll be glad that you stick with the book until the end.
The sad news is that Larsson died before The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was ever published. The really good news is that there are two additional books he finished before his death. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first in the Millennium series. The Girl Who Played with Fire which is due out in January, 2009, and Castles in the Sky will complete the set. An unfinished fourth part will remain unfinished.
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a terrific read. You won't be sorry you picked it up.
Book Review: A page-turner that doesn't deserve your time
Summary: 2 Stars
What I can say about this book is that it's a page turner. Unfortunately, I found myself turning pages in an attempt to get to the thrilling parts, the parts that would, to use one of the translator's cliches, knock my socks off. But those pages don't exist. The book is a slog. There's a huge amount of expository material, there are tantalizing hints about massive conspiracies that don't pan out, and there's a lot of wasted space. Characters are weakly developed and abandoned. Why is Blomkvist's daughter getting seriously into religion? Her biblical knowledge allows her to unwittingly help her father crack a hugely important clue in the case, sending him down the rabbit-hole as he solves the murder. And then...he literally forgets about her. He muses, at some later point, that he had meant to speak to his ex-wife about his daughter's troubling new obsession with religion, but it had slipped his mind. And that's the last of it. I haven't read many bestsellers with a character who was so obviously a plot device and nothing more. Even the characters for whom Larsson has some regard are poorly fleshed out. What does Blomkvist actually feel about the women in his life--Erika Berger, Lisbeth Salander herself? Besides their irresistable attraction to him, do we get a nuanced understanding of their relationship? Hardly.
Of course, we can forgive these character deficiencies in a good thriller. Dan Brown's books are incredibly cliched in both writing style and characterization, and just like Larsson, Brown's main character is obviously a optimistic version of the author himself. Yet we forgive Brown--somewhat--since he crafts complex, tightly-paced plots with (as he breathlessly reminds us) earth-shattering implications (government access to citizen's data! Jesus's bloodline! whatever Deception Point was about!). Brown's books are crappy, but they're still a fun read. I can't honestly say the same about this book. It moves slowly, and the amazing financial conspiracy hinted at throughout the book is resolved very unsatisfactorily at the end of the book. Moreover, Larsson's allergy to moral gray areas render the book hard to take seriously: the bad guys are rapists and Nazis, while the good guy is a gentle Swede who detests corruption and violence against women, etc etc. I'm not a big fan of thrillers, but John Le Carre is a superb author and I would recommend anything he's written, particularly "The Mission Song," a recent title. The comparison to this novel makes Larsson look like a grade-school scribbler, not a bestselling author.
Book Review: The middle was middlingly exciting
Summary: 2 Stars
The middle chunk of this book is a moderately interesting murder mystery thriller. I feel like I've read better mysterys, however. The motivations here are totally concealed and then completely explode to resolution in the space of 100 pages. The interesting part, alas, wraps up 100 pages before the end of the book. The rest is the 'corporate thriller' and is not thrilling. The 100+ pages of dull setup to start this book is not thrilling either. I love the tease on the back, something like, if you get to chapter two you're HOOKED!. Huh? Maybe if you get to chapter 14 you might get engaged.
OK, SPOILER ALERT. Again, why are are thriller masterminds so stupid? This mastermind has a worldwide criminal empire spanning drugs and WEAPONS dealing. He's ostensibly run afoul of international law in coopting aid money to arm hosile commandos or whatever. So his arch-nemesis (worth installing a mole in the organization) is a SWEDISH FINANCIAL JOURNALIST WITH A STAFF OF SIX PEOPLE? WHAT? He's not concerned about Interpol, NATO, the Columbians, NSA, CIA, MI-6, no, no, no. He's busy trying to ruin a small magazine BY CONSPIRING TO WITHHOLD ADVERTISING. REALLY?
Also, the mastermind keeps 100% of all of his files on one laptop, had kept the SAME HARD DRIVE OVER NUMEROUS LAPTOPS FOR 15 YEARS AND STILL USED IT RELIGIOUSLY EVEN AFTER FLEEING? This plot device is so stupid the book even acknowledges it in two places and continues to use it. Also, he apparently has a million bank accounts but manages to lodge every critical krona in ONE BANK ACCOUNT that apparently doesn't require him to be even aware of what's going on to withdraw some super-bonds which are so liquid and transferrable they violate every possible money laundering statute even in Switzerland.
Oh, in further SPOILERS: the second generation killer has been able to kill apparently hundreds of women in his secret underground dungeon over the course of forty years, fine. Though the town is notably small and every coming and going of our hero is observed by EVERYONE, the killer can transport foreign women in and their remains out over decades without the slightest detection. Yet, within two hours of being detected manages to not kill a journalist and crash his car into a truck. Dumb.
Further, I think the utter goofiness of the plot makes the startling violence and misogny in the book shocking and misplaced. Frankly I'm sad to see the plug from John Burdett on the back because Burdett's books are awesome.
Book Review: A Mystery with Few Stereotypes
Summary: 4 Stars
Since many reviews of this book already explain very well the plot and characters, I'll avoid going into too much detail about all that and just set out the reasons I liked this book. First of all, I seldom read mysteries anymore, although I read them when I was younger, primarily because I find them often too predictable and full of sterertypical characters and plot lines. However, this book intrigued me because, from what I read about it, it was different -- a mystery with many twists, few stereotypes.
I found that, once I became involved in the story (and I tried not to let the complexity of the details -- and there are many -- intimidate me) I was hooked. The characters -- Mikael, Lisbeth and even the members of the sometimes repulsive Vanger Clan -- were interesting and I cared about what happened next to all of them, even the rotten ones.
The mystery of the disappearance of a young girl 40 years before, the obsession of her uncle that led to his hiring a shamed journalist to solve the mystery in hopes that he could thus allow himself to die in peace, the complexity of the world the Vanger family created and lived in, to say nothing of the dark details of Lisbeth's existence and the society which gives rise to greed and violence -- all of these elements were fascinating and woven together with imagination and intelligence.
This is a mystery with some depth, that sharply comments on man's tendencies to evil, as well as to good. The dark underside of life moves constantly below the surface, often breaking through in horrible fashion.
Once the story gets going, the reader will find his mind engaged and working overtime. I decided not to worry that I didn't always know which Vanger was which -- it all worked out, ultimately. The business dealings, Nazi-esque elements, the suspense and the slow unraveling of the tale all worked together to make a fascinating morality tale, as well an entertaining yarn.
Lisbeth Salander is a character unlike any I've seen in a long time. Her complexity and vulnerability do battle with her raw courage and cynicism and she is as sympathetic as a tough tattooed young woman with multiple body piercings can be. She is hard to get to know, but I found myself wanting to understand her. Her story is key to the meaning of the whole book, I feel.
I recommend this, especially to anyone who loves a mystery with complexity and depth. Much fun, yet thought-provoking. My favorite kind of book.
Book Review: Alternately Dull and Disturbing
Summary: 3 Stars
The premise is intriguing: journalist/author Stieg Larsson places his main character and alter-ego, financial journalist Carl Mikael Blomkvist, into what would be a worst-case scenario for any reporter: a possibly career-ending conviction for libel. Then, just as Blomkvist is trying to figure out if his career is salvageable, an elderly tycoon named Henrik Vanger steps in with a lucrative offer of employment.
On the face of it, Henrik Vanger would like Blomkvist to write a history of his family which includes many people Henrik hates because they are either notorious Nazis, lazy inebriates, or both. But Henrik also wants Blomkvist to help him solve a cold murder case, and if the fabulous amounts of money he is willing to pay aren't enough of an enticement, he also offers to help Blomkvist defend himself against the presumably false libel charges, which makes this novel both a murder mystery and a revenge saga.
Into this scenario is thrown wild card Lisbeth Salander, a deranged computer hacker who joins forces with Blomkvist, and turns out to be the most interesting character in the book.
The problem with this novel for me was that there are long sections dealing with such fascinating drivel as what Blomkvist ate for lunch that day, punctuated by a few gruesome plot twists.
I would have liked the book better if the man Blomkvist supposedly libeled, Hans-Erik Wennerstrom, had appeared in person in the story, but this character remains behind the scenes the entire time. If the author would have made Wennerstrom more palpable as a menace, spent more time on Lisbeth Salander, and made the more bizarre revelations at the end of the story just a tiny bit more believable, I would have liked the novel a lot better. Also, some lengthy passages were written as conversations which were dull, hard to follow, and did not demonstrate anything interesting enough about the characters to justify the presentation of the information in that way.
What is admirable to me about Stieg Larsson is that he was well-known in Sweden for his work against neo-Nazism to the point that some were suspicious of foul play when he dropped dead of a heart attack at age fifty, leaving behind the unpublished, and possibly unedited, manuscripts for several novels. However, no real-life murder plot was ever uncovered, and his death was ruled to have been due to natural causes.