Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

[andave_ya]

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson

Corporate espionage, libel gone wrong, sociopathic heroines with a penchant for hacking…and villains so heinously evil and insane that they take on the exaggerated feeling of caricatures—that is the bulk of Stieg Larsson’s first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Vintage Crime, 2008).

With all the hype surrounding the series and the movies, I ordered the book from the library and settled in. I had hoped it would be an intriguing read and a pleasant way to while away an evening.

The book opened intriguingly enough. Journalist and magazine publisher Mikael Blomkvist was just sentenced for libel against bigtime financier Hans-Erik Wennerstrom. Found guilty, he was given a whopping fine that cleared him out and took with it quite a bit of the magazine. Burned out, he left on a leave of absence in order to take a break, do his jail time, and write the family history another bigtime CEO and patriarch, Henrik Vanger, hired him to do, mainly as a cover for the main reason Vanger hired Blomkvist: to take one more go at the mystery that had dominated Vanger’s life—the forty-year-old case of Vanger’s missing niece. In exchange, Vanger would give him the information and evidence Blomkvist would need to take Wennerstrom down.

Just as in any big family, there are lots of interesting characters and subplots whose stories thicken and enhance the plot as Blomkvist uncovers their stories and motivations and dialogues with them. To help him along, Blomkvist hires Lisbeth Salander, a troubled and abused punk with a gift for research in the way of massive hacking. Together, they uncover the horrible skeletons in the Vanger family closet—graphic, violent beyond description, involving rape, incest, kidnapping, torture, murder (several actually), and a variety of other obscenities.

It’s at the climax, when Blomkvist is in the heinous clutches of the villain, that the reader realizes that the plot has suddenly taken an extremely ridiculous twist. Such villains are far more suited to horror stories than this pseudo-realistic mystery story. Never mind that Larsson felt driven to think about and write up such dark characters—what possessed him to write a story with such believable, complex characters like Blomkvist and Salander, then saddle it with such grotesque villains? What could have been a fairly good story lost its unity and turned into a lumpy, uneven, out of proportion story with all the steam gone out of it.

Does evil have to be so grotesque for us to realize, Oh look, that is, without a doubt, evil? What about the things the other characters do—things that are morally questionable and, in some cases, remarkably stupid, like Blomkvist having three affairs through the course of the book, one of which was a longstanding one with a married woman (and the husband knows about it and is totally fine with it.) Why is this book so popular?

The book ends relatively happily, with the loose ends more or less tied up, and the mysteries satisfactorily solved. It could have been a believable book, too, if the antagonist’s story had matched in tone and in context. But with such disproportionate evil, the story has the feeling of being written around the antagonist, and the rest just window dressing to set him off. As he wrote two other books based on Blomkvist and Salander, that was obviously not intended.

I don’t think I’ll be spending more time with Larsson’s stories—where is my Eliot?!

[Buh4Bee]

Nice review. I'm glad other people feel this way about this book. I have looked at it several times and then put it back down. Maybe I'll try it, but not now.

[hillwalker]

Parts of it are over-the-top, indeed. But if you're looking for escapist literature rather than believeable drama it fits the bill. It's certainly better written than the nonsense churned out by Dan Brown or Robert Ludlum.

Unfortunately the second book has an even more absurd plot - and is by far the weakest of the trilogy - but the series is saved by a creditable finale. Of course, it depends on why you choose to read it in the first place. Hyped as the perfect Scandinavian thriller - it's no better than Jo Nesbo's work but as an epitaph to Stieg Larsson it's probably better than he could ever hope for.

H

[Revolte]

Nice review. I'm glad other people feel this way about this book. I have looked at it several times and then put it back down. Maybe I'll try it, but not now.

Same with me, eventually I'm gonna pick it up. But not likely until I finish what I'm on now, and I tend to drag through novels.

[qimissung]

That's a really good review, Andave. It is escapist literature, but I agree with you on the evil part. He made the rest of his characters quite human and realistic; why does evil always have to be writ large and grotesquely in today's novels? And I also disliked the fact that Blomkquist was having an affair with a married woman, and all three parties are alright with that. The point is that we are all almost equal parts good and evil, which is what makes us interesting as flawed human beings, who struggle with temptation and moral and ethical issues.

I've read the first and second books and will probably read the third book. In the meantime I treat my brain cells to some of the really good stuff.

[Jack of Hearts]

Almost halfway through. The prose is sufficient, not great but better than most off of its bargain rack. Pretty much the only captivating part of it is the character of Lisbeth. The mystery is ok, and the male protagonist is bland but serves a great comparison to flesh out Lisbeth against.

This reader isn't going to be able to stomach two more books of it, but this first one is an ok dime novel- it's about as low as Jack of Hearts is willing to go, as far away from real literature as he's willing to get.







J

[Jair]

Hated it. It is an action movie in words (not even good prose).

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

It's not an action movie in words. It's a thriller/mystery in words.

It was okay. It was too long--a lot of backstory could have been removed.

The OP really needs to learn what a spoiler alert is, though. I.e.,

SPOILER ALERT

The largest flaw of the book that I found was that the climax occurred so early--about three fourths of the way through the novel. At that point, the mystery has been solved; we find out who the killer was and what happened to Harriet. That's where the. Ook should've ended. Instead, the author decides to go on for another 100+ pages about Blomkvist's revenge against the big-business gangster, and at that point it's like, "who cares?" It's an interesting enough story, but after the excitement of the murder-mystery, it felt like a lot of filler and a part of another story altogether--something that should have been saved for the sequel, or discarded altogether. It made me wonder if, since the author was dead by the time the manuscript was found, if it wasn't edited. It almost seems that way. It would've benefited much from an editor saying, "All this stuff at the end either needs to be shortened dramatically or taken out altogether." It's like a 150 page epilogue.

What I really did like about the series was the character of Salander. She was an awesome, complex character. She made the book readable, and may be the reason I go on to read the other books--the first one was a quick read, after all.

I also learned that swedes seem to be pretty promiscuous.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I just watched the movie (starring Daniel Craig). I thought it was better than the book.

[tonywalt]

It just proves what I suspect. It takes over the top characters in over the top circumstances engaging in over the top actions minus metaphor and irony and any possibility of interpretation to capture the attention of mass popular culture.

I could not through this book.

[Zagreus]

I think this book will please the most those who are looking for entertainment only. As people above seemed to ramble about the exaggerated plot and characters, I will say in the novel's favour that that at least it hasn't got one of those stereotypical plots with stereotypically empty characters. Found it quite grasping, as a matter of fact. Recommended if you are looking for a cheap-but-not-too-cheap read that's easy to follow.

[Pen Name]

Andave_Ya's review reads better than the book, which I found just boring.

I missed the over the top characters, who are they? Just some boring people who do nothing, or until I stopped reading at around page 143, I kept on until then as I was reading a thriller/whodunnit by a chap called Robert Barnard, his book had the same number of pages at the point I stopped, and had people, who were three dimensional.

Tattoo convinced me there is an underlying nazism in Sweden, a woman in her twenties who because she was an orphan is still under the control of the local Bigwig and has to go to him for money to live, and ask permission to do things. What a nasty society that is.

Good review, crap book.

[Volya]

Sometimes these reviews convince me that half of lit-net are literary snobs who refuse to credit any paperback book that has appealed to a mass audience.

[Nicoletta]

-Spoilers are contained in this post!-
I liked the series because of all the detail that Stieg Larsson invested in it. I enjoyed how dedicated he was to tracking down all the loose plot lines and fitting them together. For example, I would not have liked the book as much if Larsson hadn't given us closure on what finally happened between Wennerstrom and Blomkvist. Sure the book could have ended after the killer expired, however, the fact that it didn't made it a pretty solid read for me. In my opinion, the prose might not have been astounding but the depth of the novel was there.

[Calidore]

It became more interesting to me when I learned that Larsson was interested in updated versions of classic characters and Lisbeth Salander was his version of a grown-up, traumatized Pippi Longstocking.