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Loading... The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Vintage) (original 2005; edition 2009)by Stieg Larsson
Work InformationThe Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (2005)
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I really don't get what the fuss is about. It gets more readable about 2/3 of the way in, if I remember correctly: it stops being a chore and starts being mildly entertaining. I can think of a lot of trashy mystery novels I have read with a lot more gusto. I wonder if my problem is not being awestruck by Lisbeth. She is interesting---the bits following her investigations are some of the most interesting in the book---but her philosophy and approach to life really don't shock me or shake me up. Perhaps, as nerds, we're a little too similar. Oh, and I nearly forgot how much extraneous detail there is in the writing. Meals, clothes, you name it. It reads like a mediocre fanfic. Hm, that's sort of how I feel about all of the characters, too. I went into this book hoping for something really exciting. However, I'm still not quite sure what I had in this book. 200 pages in it was still moving slow, although I had been assured by friends that it would speed up and get better. It did and it didn't. It did speed up. It did not get better. This is the scenario: Mikael Blomkvist is a journalist/editor/publisher of a magazine that he has to leave for a time because of some bad, or untimely, reporting. He is hired by a rival company's ex-CEO to solve a nearly 40 year mystery into the disappearance/murder of a 16 year old girl who had been set to inherit a large portion of shares in the family business. What Blomkvist finds is unexpected, unless you've been reading the book. The story is predictable, the plots (there are two) are not really linked, and much like the Twilight series, the characters are very much like fan fiction's Mary Sues and the good guy and good girl are the most hard-put, even thought they persevere no matter how hard the going gets. That said, I couldn't help but read it. I HAD to make sure that the conclusions I had come to nearly from the beginning were the right conclusions, hoping against hope that they weren't and that Larsson would have something unexpected in the conclusions of his plots. To no avail, though. I think it merits 2 stars--It's good to read if you don't expect too much and you have time. I just feel like I wasted much of mine.
[Richman reviews several Scandinavian novels, including Larsson's.] Why have readers taken to these writers? The novels are not formally innovative: With a few exceptions, these are straightforward whodunits, hewing closely to conventional models from the English tradition. Nor does their appeal depend on a "relentlessly bleak view of the world," as a writer for the London Times has put it. Bleak worldviews are not particularly hard to come by in crime novels, no matter what country they come from. What distinguishes these books is not some element of Nordic grimness but their evocation of an almost sublime tranquility. When a crime occurs, it is shocking exactly because it disrupts a world that, at least to an American reader, seems utopian in its peacefulness, happiness, and orderliness. It’s Mr. Larsson’s two protagonists — Carl Mikael Blomkvist, a reporter filling the role of detective, and his sidekick, Lisbeth Salander, a k a the girl with the dragon tattoo — who make this novel more than your run-of-the-mill mystery: they’re both compelling, conflicted, complicated people, idiosyncratic in the extreme, and interesting enough to compensate for the plot mechanics, which seize up as the book nears its unsatisfying conclusion. The novel offers a thoroughly ugly view of human nature, especially when it comes to the way Swedish men treat Swedish women. In Larsson’s world, sadism, murder and suicide are commonplace — as is lots of casual sex. (Sweden isn’t all bad.) The first-time author's excitement at his creation is palpable, strangely, in the book's sometimes amateurish construction. There are frequent long digressions in this big book (more than 500 pages) in which he laboriously fills in back-story details. Then there is the Vanger family; what might have seemed like a bit of fun gets out of hand as easily more than 20 people with the surname Vanger are mixed into the story. To his credit, though, he always regains control and restores momentum. Belongs to SeriesMillennium (1) Belongs to Publisher SeriesFarfalle [Marsilio] (130) Heyne Allgemeine Reihe (43245) Áncora y Delfín (1124) Is contained inHas the adaptationIs abridged inIs parodied inHas as a reference guide/companionHas as a studyHas as a student's study guideAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
The disappearance forty years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden, gnaws at her octogenarian uncle, Henrik Vanger. He is determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder. He hires crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist, recently at the wrong end of a libel case, to get to the bottom of Harriet's disappearance. Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-four-year-old, pierced, tattooed genius hacker, possessed of the hard-earned wisdom of someone twice her age--and a terrifying capacity for ruthlessness--assists Blomkvist with the investigation. This unlikely team discovers a vein of nearly unfathomable iniquity running through the Vanger family, an astonishing corruption at the highest echelon of Swedish industrialism--and a surprising connection between themselves.--From publisher description. No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)839.738Literature German literature and literatures of related languages Other Germanic literatures Swedish literature Swedish fiction 2000-LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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