The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Or, as the Swedish title translates, Men Who Hate Women.

I'm a latecomer to this one, as the English translation to this Swedish thriller came out like three years ago. But I've never been big on mystery and crime fiction--the likes of Grisham, Patterson, and JD Robb don't interest me at all. So, although Dragon Tattoo was a bestseller, the fact that it was crime fiction in fact turned me off a little. There are two fiction genres that I can't really get into, for many reasons: romance and mystery/crime. I like a good romance, and I like a good thriller, but if they take place in the so-called "real world," with all their formulas and conventions, I have a hard time suspending my disbelief. I like Law and Order as much as the next person, but READING that shit is so BORING!

I changed my mind about Dragon Tattoo when I first saw the trailer for David Fincher's adaptation. Suffice to say, it looked really cool. So I decided to read the book.

And, well, I liked it, but it certainly didn't get me as obsessed as Harry Potter or even the Hunger Games, which was 100 times more violent than this adult novel. Though the violence depicted is no less horrifying.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson, for those of you who don't already know, follows the story of investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist shortly after his conviction of libel. Wanting to get back at the man who slammed him with the suit and restore his reputation, he agrees to work for the wealthy retired businessman Henrik Vanger, writing a family chronicle and searching for new evidence regarding Harriet Vanger's disappearance, if any can be found. While he thinks this is a cold case, he does stumble upon new evidence, leading him to ever-more dangerous territory, and he eventually enlists the help of Lisbeth Salander, a rebellious idiot savant of sorts, an expert hacker and possessor of great intelligence, even if her social skills are lacking. Though Blomkvist is the ostensible protagonist, Salander is the real star, with her distinctive look, smarts, and mysterious past. She's the one with real secrets, which we learn precious little of in the first installment of the trilogy, and the real reason why anyone has bothered to read the next two--her story is the one left unfinished at the end.

The story is easy enough to follow, and the language dryly straightforward--almost excruciatingly so; Larsson often goes through the mundane details of a character's day with bland precision, summarizing unimportant events in whole pages, and getting vague when it comes to a foreshadowy event--for example, deliberately withholding the identity of a particular place or target until the end. The only bits remotely confusing were the strange ubiquitousness of certain British-sounding terms (such as "blanched" and "draughty") and the consistent use of characters' last names to identify them (which, as an American used to identifying characters by first name, was tough to get used to). While Blomkvist and Salander don't meet until Chapter 18, there are plenty of developments that perk up the story as it chugs along those first 300 pages. I was certainly intrigued and entertaining enough to finish and even pick up the next book.

However, I had a few problems with Dragon Tattoo. For one, it took a while to get to the meat of the story (see mention of painfully detailed unimportant events above). And for another, the sexual exploits of the characters, including Blomkvist and Salander's affair, kind of grossed me out. Of course I anticipated sex, even violent sex (as the books focus on violence against women--though of course this sex is shown as abhorrent), to be depicted in an adult novel, I was weirded out by the fact that Salander and Blomkvist in particular viewed just about everyone of the opposite sex as a potential sex partner, regardless of age. While this may be because Swedish culture and European culture in general is more liberal about sex than the States, I just don't get the thinking about sex so much. I also am weirded out by relationships that feature a big age difference (like Salander and Blomkvist's), and their relationship started out randomly--almost arbitrarily. I also take offense to the assumption that any two characters of the opposite sex who work together will ultimately sleep together (which seems to be the case in Dragon Tattoo) regardless of whether they would even be attracted to each other in real life. The resulting breakup of Salander and Blomkvist didn't move me at all, since I didn't see them staying together anyway. Most importantly, I didn't read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for a love story. I wanted thrills, not sexual tension. Thankfully, it didn't overshadow the real story (though I'm not so sure about the final book, when most of these romances resolve).

On the other hand, like many good mysteries, I didn't see the ending coming--though I did suspect that Harriet was in fact alive somewhere. The climatic chapters were the ones in which I just couldn't put the book down, and the bad guys are sort-of beaten--though perhaps not in the ideal way. And of course, a few live to see another day--and bring our heroes grief in the next two volumes, for sure. While I don't give a shit about the romantic subplots, I'm interested in what the next two books have in store for Blomkvist and Salander--and what Salander's past looked like. Three out of five stars.