About the Book
Cases rarely come much colder than the decades-old disappearance of teen heiress Harriet Vanger from her family’s remote island retreat north of Stockholm, nor do fiction debuts hotter than this European bestseller by muckraking Swedish journalist Larsson. At once a strikingly original thriller and a vivisection of Sweden’s dirty not-so-little secrets (as suggested by its original title, Men Who Hate Women), this first of a trilogy introduces a provocatively odd couple: disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist, freshly sentenced to jail for libeling a shady businessman, and the multipierced and tattooed Lisbeth Salander, a feral but vulnerable superhacker.
Hired by octogenarian industrialist Henrik Vanger, who wants to find out what happened to his beloved great-niece before he dies, the duo gradually uncover a festering morass of familial corruption—at the same time, Larsson skillfully bares some of the similar horrors that have left Salander such a marked woman. Larsson died in 2004, shortly after handing in the manuscripts for what will be his legacy.
The Long Story
I began The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo with a bit of hesitation – especially because my friend warned me that not much interesting happens until about page fifty.
She is right.
It isn’t until you meet the character of Lisbeth that you find your hook for the story. Disturbed, determined and a computer whiz, Lisbeth is a character who is immediately engaging and is – in my opinion – the reason you need to keep reading through the beginning. When the reading got heavy and the mystery of Harriet Vanger got boring, Lisbeth is the character who kept carrying me through. If you meet her and don’t like her… Well, you can probably put the book down.
From a writer’s standpoint, I don’t know how Larsson got away with what he did. He uses large chunks of description, takes incredible amounts of time on blocks of texts that are arguably unnecessary to the story and – as my friend mentioned – the hook doesn’t start until about page fifty. Those things pretty much go against all the writing ‘rules’ I was taught.
However, from a reader’s standpoint, I still found the book interesting and read it through to the end. In the last fifth, I scarcely put it down out of curiosity of how Larsson would wrap everything up. The ending is satisfying with a touch of intimate tragedy that makes it all work, but I found myself with a ‘shrug’ type of feeling rather than any immense satisfaction.
That being said, I will be reading the second – and possibly the third – book.
The Short Story
I recommend this book only as an experience outside of normal writing style. This is a strange book the perplexes me, but there has to be a reason it’s on the bestseller list, right?
***
Rating: 3 Stars
[What do the ratings mean?]
***
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Steig Larsson
http://www.stieglarsson.com/
ISBN: 978-0307454546
Length: 608 Pages
