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 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: This Swedish bestseller deserves to be a blockbuster here too.
Summary: 5 Stars
A 24-year-old computer hacker sporting an assortment of tattoos and body piercings and afflicted with Asperger Syndrome or something of the like has been under state guardianship in her native Sweden since she was thirteen. She supports herself by doing deep background investigations for Dragan Armansky, who, in turn, worries the anorexic-looking Lisbeth Salander is "the perfect victim for anyone who wished her ill." Salander may look fourteen and stubbornly shun social norms, but she possesses the inner strength of a determined survivor. She sees more than her word processor page in black and white and despises the users and abusers of this world. She won't hesitate to exact her own unique brand of retribution against small-potatoes bullies, sick predators, and corrupt magnates alike.
Financial journalist Carl Mikael Blomkvist has just been convicted of libeling a financier and is facing a fine and three months in jail. Blomkvist, after a Salander-completed background check, is summoned to a meeting with semi-retired industrialist Henrik Vanger whose far-flung but shrinking corporate empire is wholly family owned. Vanger has brooded for 36 years about the fate of his great niece, Harriet. Blomkvist is expected to live for a year on the island where many Vanger family members still reside and where Harriet was last seen. Under the cover story that he is writing a family history, Blomkvist is to investigate which family member might have done away with the teenager.
So, the stage is set. The reader easily guesses early that somehow Blomkvist and Salander will pool their talents to probe the Vanger mystery. However,Swede Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is no humdrum, formulaic whodunit. It is fascinating and very difficult to put down. Nor is it without some really suspenseful and chillingly ugly scenes....
The issue most saturating The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is that of shocking sexual violence primarily against women but not excluding men. Salander and Blomkvist both confront prima facie evidence of such crimes. Larsson's other major constituent elements are corporate malfeasance that threatens complete collapse of stock markets and anarchistic distrust of officialdom to the point of endorsing (at least, almost) vigilantism. He also deals with racism as he spins a complex web from strands of real and imagined history concerning mid-twentieth century Vanger affiliations with Sweden's fascist groups.
But Larsson's carefully calibrated tale is more than a grisly, cynical world view of his country and the modern world at large. At its core, it is an fascinating character study of a young woman who easily masters computer code but for whom human interaction is almost always more trouble than it is worth, of an investigative reporter who chooses a path of less resistance than Salander but whose humanity reaches out to many including her, and of peripheral characters -- such as Armansky -- who need more of their story told.
Fortunately, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in English translation will be followed by two more in the Millennium series: The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Air Castle that Blew Up. I can't wait. Larsson also made a 200-page start on a fourth book, but sadly he succumbed to a heart attack in 2004 and his father decided the unfinished work will remain unpublished.
I recommend this international bestseller to all who eagerly sift new books for challenging intellectual crime thrillers, who luxuriate in immersing themselves in the ambience of a compellingly created world and memorable characters, who soak up financial and investigative minutiae as well as computer hacking tidbits, and who want to share Larsson's crusade against violence and racism.
Book Review: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is one of those hidden gems that no one really knows about until they start hearing about the hype. For the uneducated, this book represents the first in a series of posthumous works done by a Swedish man named Stieg Larsson, a former editor in chief of a Swedish anti-racist magazine, Expo. Died at the still-young age of fifty, he left a series of manuscripts behind and these have become a sort of a publishing phenomenon, gaining fans in as far as Asia and America and every continent in between. But this series has teeth, has grit like no other, and the international success is well deserved. A writer of political journalism who has such masterful storytelling in his repertoire, however direct and clunky, is a gift rarely seen.
What we have here could be described as a typical thriller hook: the plot of the missing girl. A girl named Harriet Vanger has been missing for well over four decades, which turns out to be something of an unsolved mystery. That is the impetus for Henrik Vanger's obsession in solving the case of the missing niece. Along the way, he employs a character said to be the closest thing to a Stieg Larsson literary alter ego, Mikael Blomqvist, a journalist, who in turn finds out a devious secret within the Vanger family. But the true star of the book (and the series, for that matter) is the seemingly anti-social computer hacker, who turns out to be the one who actually falls in love, albeit in the only way that she knows. But not before she gets knee deep in the case herself.
If there is one thing to be said about the gothic and rather rude Lisbeth Salander, it is that she contains some of Larsson's own traits, as mentioned by many of his biographers. Not surprising at all. One can only see how this series became an overnight publishing sensation. The character symbolizes a sort of enigma on which the other seemingly strange happenings (some of them could be deemed to be offensive) could have been pointing towards. A mystery in female form, and yet she feels familiar, friendly even. Larsson's choice of characters feels symbolic. Consistent with the rest of the book, every plot detail, however clumsy and coincidental, feels symbolic in the overall theme of domestic and psychopathic abuse. Which is why, I think, Harlan Corben coined it to be a novel of big ideas, which it certainly is. Larsson does cramp a lot of seemingly post-modern furnishings to the story as well, but frequent mentions of Apple's Powerbook seem an overtly expressed obsession on Larsson's part.
However, that remains a small concern, as the story does have some scary moments in which status quos are changed in an instant. Coupled with issues as raw and shocking as serial murder and rape, this book does enthrall even hardcore thriller fans, partly because of its intense shock value, but more so the charming articulation of the shocking subject matter itself. The crimes seem impactful and meaningful in view of the overall plot and Larsson's worldview never feels compromised on top of it. Although he writes in a Jason Starr-esque style that emphasizes plot above beautiful reading prose, the plot here feels appropriate to the book's purposes, the compelling factor of it drawing us in, making us turn the pages at a staggering rate.
To experience such a phenomenal piece of work in depth, you need to read it for yourself. This is because, frankly, mere words can never sufficiently detail every single nuance in this book. It would be impossible to do such a thing. Just know that when you come into this book, don't feel intimidated in the least. Instead, approach this thrilling crime story with open arms. The dividends are bountiful.
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.