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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, or Men Who Hate Women as the name is when translated straight from Swedish, is Stieg Larsson’s primary novel. It is also the original part of his The Millennium Trilogy. Millennium is rather little magazine that is owned by journalist Mikael “Kalle” Blomkvist and his “occational lover” Erika Berger. Millennium is published in Stockholm, the pretty capital of Sweden. In the beginning of the book, Mikael Blomkvist gets sentenced to prison for three months for libeling of well-known Swedish business man Hans-Erik Wennerstrom. Mikael had been accusing Wennerstrom for a lot of kind of white-collar crimes, but in the end all the proof falls to pieces for numerous reason. Mikael pledges for revenge since he thinks the sentence was underserved. Soon he seems to get a modify for it, when another business-mogul Henrik Vanger approaches him with and interesting and likeable offer. Vanger wants Mikael to solve a mystery that has become an obsession to Henrik Vanger: what happened to his niece Harriet Vanger forty years ago when she just disappeared without a trace. And if Mikael succeeds, Vanger will give him Wennerstrom’s head on a plate. Another occupation for Mikael is to write a book in regards to Vanger-family and it is history. Mikael agrees to take the occupation and spend a year in Vanger-family’s hometown, a little town Hedestad. 300 km north from Stockholm. Mikael starts his occupation by inspecting the family history, and soon he finds out that there are skeletons buried in almost each closet he opens. It seems that closely each family fellow member hates each other. There are a lot of weird characters in the family tree and only Henrik Vanger seems to be normal one. Mikael notices as well, that not each family fellow member is keen on the fact that Mikael has started digging the mysteries of the family. While seeking material for his book regarding Vanger-family, Mikael starts to solve the weird disappeareance of Harriet Vanger. It happened 40 years go, when the whole family was gathered together. In the early afternoon Harriet just disappeared without a trace and not a single soul had a glue where she had gone. Everything happened in a closed island Hedeby near Hedestad. It’s famouse so called “closed-room scenario”. Due to car accident, roads out from the island are closed for a day, and for the duration of that time Harriet disappears. Nothing points that a crime has happened that can’t be ruled either. The whole island is searched through various times but no sign of Harriet is found. Years go by but Harriet’s case remains unsolved. Finally, after working hard for galore months, the mysteries starts tardily unfold itself. Mikael also finds out that he needs help because there are so much things that need to be researched. Henrik Vanger’s lawyer and good friend Dirch Frode tells Mikael with regards to Lisbet Salander, who have been helping Frode and Vanger earlier as well. Lisbet is an extraordinary young woman with a lot of piercings and, a dragon tattoo. Lisbet is a genious with computers and is capable to make them anything for herself. She, of course, has her own closets full of skeletons. Through her short life, Lisbet has been dragged from institution to institution. She is applied to solve arguments with other persons with violence and has aroused troubles as well. But she’s not stupid, nowhere near… Together these two very dissimilar humans begin gather the pieces of the puzzle, and at long last the pieces get started to find their places and a horrible, horrid picture commence to shape. They know they are near to solve the mystery when someone starts threatening them. First by putting a dead cat on the porch of Mikaels little cabin in Hedeby, and then with more severe actions… Finally this horrendous story and journeying reaches it end, and it will be stimulating and interesting! As a good deal of reviewers before me have said, though this novel is a fantastic introductory novel, it is likewise partly farfetched and extravagant. Turns in the plot are full of imagination, but once in a while even too much full of it. But still, there are a lot more positive sides in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and this girl herself is the most interesting one. Lisbet Salander is the most improbable star in the world of crime novels at the moment. Stieg Larsson has succeeded to manufacture a pretty and compelling reputation even she unquestionably is not a fashionable one. Mikael Blomkvist’s reputation isn’t so interesting but these two work together very well. But anyway, I liked this novel so much that I can’t wait to get my hands to the other two books of the Millennium Trilogy: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest and The Girl Who Played with Fire. Most helpful customer reviews 2126 of 2282 people found the following review helpful. 35 of 37 people found the following review helpful. A lot of people have already outlined the plot, so I won’t go into it here especially since it’s rather complex in and of itself. Personally, what set me off at first from the book is the writing style. It is how one would write an article for a newspaper, magazine, etc.; succeint and to the point. Which of course makes sense looking at the fact that the late author was a reporter. But what feels wrong to me is the fact that he spends so much time telling. Everytime I started to get an image in my mind about what a house, village, person looked like, it could never fully form because I was essentially being told the basic outline and that’s all. This writing style is not immersive to me, nor were the parts where plot advancements/clues are literally bashed over the readers head just in case we really are as obtuse as Herr Larsson seems to suspect. I found both lead characters rather stiff and lacking any sort of defining personality. Mikael Blomkvist, the male lead, apparently is so hot that every women wants to have sex with him and a vast majority end up loving him. He has been a serial adulter for over twenty years with one woman, losing his own marriage to this affair and also takes on other women on the side. He really seems to have no regard for any of his sexual partners and believes that sex is merely a recreation and its your fault if you even dare suggest it be thought of as something more. Several times in the novel he makes incredibly dumb desicions and at the climax of the main mystery he makes one of the stupidest mistakes, something so brazenly foolish that you wonder if he was given any brains at all. Lisbeth Salander, the female lead is a little more sympathic but Larsson seems focused on making every bad thing in world that is possible happen to her. This is a spoiler, but seeing that it has been mentioned all throughout the reviews here I’ll go ahead: there is a graphic rape scene regarding her. While, supposedly, the rapist returns in the second book, it still seems completely out of place and unnecessary. It does nothing to further the plot/story whatsoever. To make matters worse the whole sequence reads like a revenge fantasy rather then what would actually happen to a 24 year old, emotionally impaired woman who was sadistically raped. These three things mixed together – the writing style, and the two main characters – made for a very subpar reading experience for me. I so wanted to like this book, I thought the plot sounded intense and like a breath of fresh air. Instead, as the centeral mystery wound to it’s conclusion, things just got out of control and exited the realm of what could be believed and instead seemed to be used more for shock value. For those that are worried about reading a translated book, don’t be. Yes there are a couple of translator errors and a couple of sentences that aren’t just clunky in English but actually don’t make sense unless you reorder the words. Other then these small problems though, it’s pretty smooth. As someone who has done translation work before, it’s hard to be 100% perfect and this is definitely one of the better translations that I’ve read. See all 2965 customer reviews… |
This Swedish bestseller deserves to be a blockbuster here too.
Among the Minority
