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esorharas 's review for:
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
by Stieg Larsson
It really is difficult to know how to start this review. Shall I start with how long it took me to get past the first few pages of this book? That I started it and put it down again four times before getting far enough in it to not put it back on the bookshelf?
Or shall I move on to the story? The story is complex, and builds steadily throughout the book. Lisbeth Salander is the heroine. She's an accomplished security specialist and computer hacker, with a troubled past and a difficulty with social interactions. Mikael Blomkvist is a journalist, who is convicted of libel at the beginning of the book and, in an attempt to recover his ruined reputation (or perhaps forget about it) accepts a crazy job from Henrik Vanger, an industrialist and head of the Vanger Corporation. Henrik wants Mikael to write the chronicle of his family as a cover for the more interesting task of finding out what happened to his "adopted" daughter/granddaughter Harriet decades earlier. And then the story goes on from there. At first Blomkvist and Salander have nothing to do with each other, and their stories appear to run separately, with only a slight link. And then they are thrown together quite suddenly, and the stories converge.
There are many strengths to this book. It's well-written and well thought out. The plot is good, gripping for the most part, and keeps you guessing right to the end about "who did it". I had my suspects (and quite a few) but I think they were deliberate ploys by the author to throw us off the scent. I was quite surprised when the twist came about, as I had not suspected that character at all! Larsson has a knack for building characters as well as stories. He does it in a more journalistic style, much like the entire book is written, and throws us snippets of information, gives us things to consider gradually. There are also clear nods to authors Larsson was inspired by or admired himself, some of whom are named in the book.
The weaknesses? The climax came too soon and so for the last however many pages (I'll stick a guess in at about fifty, but it could have been more) we were told about how Blomkvist recovered his career, and a few loose ends were tied up. This mirrored the beginning of the book, where Blomkvist's career was in tatters and the author had to set up the story by telling us all about this, and about the Vanger corporation, and so on and so forth. While this was necessary for the story, it did make for some boring reading for those who have no interest in journalism or big corporations in Sweden. Other weaknesses? The style did mean you felt a little bit detached from the characters at times. If we were seeing things from Salander's point of view, for example, Blomkvist and every other character suddenly seemed almost alien, in a way. Now that I think about it, though, this was probably deliberate to give us an idea on how things actually can be for people like Salander, and to help us understand her actions a bit more. Larsson throws the idea out there that Salander has Asperger's Syndrome, which would explain a lot.
Or shall I move on to the story? The story is complex, and builds steadily throughout the book. Lisbeth Salander is the heroine. She's an accomplished security specialist and computer hacker, with a troubled past and a difficulty with social interactions. Mikael Blomkvist is a journalist, who is convicted of libel at the beginning of the book and, in an attempt to recover his ruined reputation (or perhaps forget about it) accepts a crazy job from Henrik Vanger, an industrialist and head of the Vanger Corporation. Henrik wants Mikael to write the chronicle of his family as a cover for the more interesting task of finding out what happened to his "adopted" daughter/granddaughter Harriet decades earlier. And then the story goes on from there. At first Blomkvist and Salander have nothing to do with each other, and their stories appear to run separately, with only a slight link. And then they are thrown together quite suddenly, and the stories converge.
There are many strengths to this book. It's well-written and well thought out. The plot is good, gripping for the most part, and keeps you guessing right to the end about "who did it". I had my suspects (and quite a few) but I think they were deliberate ploys by the author to throw us off the scent. I was quite surprised when the twist came about, as I had not suspected that character at all! Larsson has a knack for building characters as well as stories. He does it in a more journalistic style, much like the entire book is written, and throws us snippets of information, gives us things to consider gradually. There are also clear nods to authors Larsson was inspired by or admired himself, some of whom are named in the book.
The weaknesses? The climax came too soon and so for the last however many pages (I'll stick a guess in at about fifty, but it could have been more) we were told about how Blomkvist recovered his career, and a few loose ends were tied up. This mirrored the beginning of the book, where Blomkvist's career was in tatters and the author had to set up the story by telling us all about this, and about the Vanger corporation, and so on and so forth. While this was necessary for the story, it did make for some boring reading for those who have no interest in journalism or big corporations in Sweden. Other weaknesses? The style did mean you felt a little bit detached from the characters at times. If we were seeing things from Salander's point of view, for example, Blomkvist and every other character suddenly seemed almost alien, in a way. Now that I think about it, though, this was probably deliberate to give us an idea on how things actually can be for people like Salander, and to help us understand her actions a bit more. Larsson throws the idea out there that Salander has Asperger's Syndrome, which would explain a lot.