Ben Writes

Book Review: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

In the next few weeks I’ll be tackling each of the three books in Stieg Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy, this week we’ll start with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. The books were released posthumously, something of a labor of love that the Swedish journalist wrote in his spare time. Upon their release, the books took the literary world by storm, selling over 27 million copies. Three Swedish movies were released in 2009 and the first in the trilogy that I’ll be going over today is one of the most highly anticipated releases of the year.

Overview

To understand the politics in the novels is to understand the man behind the books. Larsson was something of a political activist, he dedicated his career and life to many left wing organizations. His activities ranged from training Ethiopian Guerrillas to use rocket launchers to outing the Neo-Nazi underbelly of Sweden. Unsurprisingly, Larsson’s politics shine through in his writing, many of his antagonists tend to show the kind of right wing racist and sexist extremism he fought to expose.

Let me begin by saying The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo starts out at a crawl while Larsson slowly introduces us to his two protagonists, Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander. In fact, and I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this, I put down the book withing the first forty pages or so and didn’t pick it for a few weeks. As painfully slowly as the book starts, if you hang on past the first 50 pages it won’t be long before you are engrossed in a very standard murder mystery plot that develops. That is not to say it isn’t exciting and worth reading, more that it feels vaguely familiar and done before.

What really shines throughout the plot of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is the fantastic character development - Lisbeth and Mikael are very engrossing characters and Larsson takes his time building up an intricate history and relationships that plays very prominently in the following books. Mikael is a journalist who works for a small left wing magazine, when we are first introduced to him he is in the middle of a libel suit that threatens to sink his career and magazine. Lisbeth is a dark, brooding, intense woman who seems to suffer from Aspergers Syndrome but shows a talent for computers. Unsurprisingly, our protagonists find they have to rely on each other to destroy the people threatening their lives.

As mentioned, the book heavily features subjects that Larsson addressed in his professional life. Our characters’ histories are rife with abuse at the hands of authority figures, corrupt and racist cops, and shady capitalists. Some situations are almost hyperbolic and cringe worthy but serve their purpose in the course of our story.

What I liked

- The character development is beyond engrossing and by far the most impressive part of the book. Their stories are heart wrenching, maddening, completely … well … engrossing.

- While simplistic, the mystery plot is very well done and plays into the storyline pretty well.

- Larsson paints a beautiful picture of Sweden from it’s bustling cities to it’s quiet, snow covered country.

What I Didn’t Like
-The politics are completely heavy handed and have all of the subtlety of a tack hammer over the head, almost too over the top.

-The book starts off painfully slowly almost the point of being unreadable.

Conclusion
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a fantastic book and a terrific opening for the rest of the trilogy.

****.5 out of *****