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Loading... The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Vintage) (original 2005; edition 2009)by Stieg Larsson, Reg Keeland (Translator)
Work InformationThe Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (2005)
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It’s well worth making your way through the initial confusing slog. ( ) I read the third book in the series and liked it, which led me to the first book. If I had read this first, I might not have continued. Don't get me wrong. It is still a good read but I find the plot development rather abrupt. Nothing happened for a few months and suddenly Blomkvist found a few clues, one of which by intuition even. Then he was suddenly shot at, and the book's villain decided to show himself. The sexual attraction between Blomkvist and Salander is also quite sudden. It seems more of a plot device to showcase Salander's personality than anything else. This was the third time I have tried to read this book. I don’t normally force myself to finish books, as life is too short for bad books, but this one had so many rave reviews I did force myself to finish. I was underwhelmed by the story. The first several chapters seemed to consist of everything I really never wanted to know about the Swedish banking system. Then we get several pages of Blomqvist getting up, eating breakfast, going for a run, etc. Finally halfway through the book some action takes place! They are solving a decades old mystery disappearance that is supposedly a murder, but which it’s pretty obvious that the murdered woman is still alive. At least it was to me. Some more action, then back to the Swedish banking system. I truly like the character of Lisbeth, but she really wasn’t in the book that much and no background on her at all. Very disappointed in this book
[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 SeriesColumna (762) Farfalle [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 and related languages Other Germanic literatures Swedish literature Swedish fiction 2000-LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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