The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
is about a journalist who is hired to help solve the mysterious disappearance of Harriet Vanger. In the end he, and his hired computer genius assistant Lisbeth, discover more about the Vanger family than anyone ever imagined. A couple notable things about this book. First, there is a lot of hype about this book (and the trilogy as a whole), so my expectations were set pretty high. In the end, I don't think the book lived up to the hype, but I find that's usually the case (at least for me). The book is good, but I didn't think it was quite that good.
Second, the book was translated from Swedish to English. Consequently, some of the translations are a little off. Nothing too bad, but more than once I found myself wondering how a sentence was really supposed to sound. There are also a lot of Swedish references that I just didn't get, and the names and locations were a little difficult for my mono-linguisitic brain at times.
*****SPOILER*****
For those that have read this, did you find all the sex/relationships superfluous? Everyone is banging everyone else and it didn't seem to do much for the plot. I know at the very end Salander decides she loves Blomkvist, so I suppose it sort of had a purpose, but overall I found myself going "Just solve the mystery already!" I wonder if this will continue with the rest of the series and if it will flush out to have more of a point.
And was anyone else not super enthralled with the business dealings of Wennerstrom? I wish they had either (1) flushed out the details of that more so I could actually understand the corruption that was going on or (2) just dropped the plot line entirely. Like did he really need to go to jail for the plot to move forward? Not at all. And Duh! of course Vanger didn't really have much on Wennerstrom ... I saw that one coming from a million miles away ...
Despite that, I think it's an interesting read. I do think this could make a good movie (I heard there are two in the making?? Is that right?), and I do plan on reading the rest of the trilogy. Overall, it's a better than decent read (I just didn't find it worthy of all the omg it's the best thing to come out of Sweden since IKEA! hype) and it was fun to read a little mystery.
I started reading this book but the beginning was pretty slow and I gave up on it. Maybe I should try again? And yes it is going to be a movie! Think I read Brad Pitt is going to be in it...
ReplyDeleteMicah - The beginning is slow. I put it down and picked it up often. Eventually though it does pick up.
ReplyDeleteI'm reading the second one now, and so far I think it's much more interesting. You could always just skip the first one ...
maybe ill pick it up with my amazon cert, or maybe ill buy lots of trashy romance novels
ReplyDeleteKari - I'd get Dragon Tattoo from the library and go for the trashy romance novels from amazon :)
ReplyDeleteI just finished this book 5 minutes ago. I didn't let myself read your review before, because I knew I wouldn't be able to resist highlighting your white text! Haha. Anyway, I pretty much had the exact same complaints about it as you did. That's pretty much all I will say, and I'll write my own review soon-ish (might copy your white spoiler text idea), but yeah, it's pretty much the same.
ReplyDeleteAnd it took me about 100 pages in to really get interested in it. I know that Larsson died before they published any of these, so maybe they didn't feel like they could cut certain things down and edit them without him? I dunno.
Amanda - It took me awhile to get into this book too. I could certainly see that about the editing. Or maybe it's a language/cultural thing? I have no idea. I liked the second one a lot though :) Are you going to jump into that one next?
ReplyDeleteI haven't decided yet. This one is over 600 pages long and I just wasn't sure if it deserved that much of my life! But if you think the second one is better, maybe I'll give it a chance.
ReplyDelete