The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Ratings1,079
Average rating4.1
Started off extremely slow and boring. Picked up at around 150 pages in and couldnt put it down. Great book!! Cant wait to read the next in the series
This book is long and complex getting into, but I found that once I got the hang of it, I quickly read the rest. So many of the scenes are iconic and I love the characters.
It's been a hot minute since I read this book but my opinion of it has stayed the same; it is well-written, and like watching a train wreck. It is gruesome and brutal but also enthralling and clever. All in all, a very good book, but definitely not exactly for the very faint of heart.
For a book described frequently as a riveting page turner, the first hundred pages or so are exceptionally boring. Thankfully, Stieg Larsson has two prominent writing flaws on his side that come together rather well. One - he describes action with the most minute and insignificant details and introduces characters and scenarios in the most clinical and drab way possible. Two - his prose style is completely without personality or flair. So what ends up happening is that as you read this you are bogged down with senseless facts and minutiae, but his writing is so without complexity that before you know it you've plowed through two hundred pages, so what's four hundred more?
Larsson's style also works well with the content he delivers, which is heavily disturbing and violent. Issues of rape, murder, and incest he handles with all the tact and precision of a surgical textbook. This has a strange effect on his two main characters, Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander. They are great characters. Blomkvist seems to be taken straight out of some progressive activist's wet dream - an idealistic journalist who exposes white collar crime, and is willing to serve time for it, who has a carefree love life and apparently irresistible looks and charm. Salander I struggled with when she was introduced. I didn't think Larsson had ever actually met a goth before, and if he had they didn't get to know too much about each other. She is introduced as a novelty, almost as decoration than anything else, objectified by almost everyone who comes in contact with her as a victim, delinquent, or freak. Once we get into her head though, her frailty and determination coalesce nicely into a very real feeling person. Nonetheless, with both her and Blomkvist, the reader is kept at arm's length through most of the story. They are two people who seem to exist moment to moment only, taking blows and injustices in stride and able to throw themselves into the next interesting thing without any care for what they're leaving behind. For Blomkvist this seems to be the life of the passionate person he's always been; for Salander its a coping mechanism, one that towards the end of the story begins to break down.
And the story? It's pretty good, too. Larsson provides a real brain scratcher of a mystery, and then totally delivers with a conclusion that is shocking enough to be satisfying, but is not so far out of left field that it feels unnatural. That's what I think makes this book so enjoyable, is that clearly Larsson began the story with a very specific intention - to write about women who suffer at the hands of terrible men just because they are women. Its somewhat anti-intellectual in the sense that it shrugs off the popular concept of the intriguing serial killer with the tragic past and the abnormal psychology. Larsson writes these rapists and murderers the story encounters as totally unsympathetic, but not as monsters. They are distorted pieces of humanity, like clumsy trolls they wander through the world leaving a trail of pain and suffering behind them, all for the sake of satisfying their needs. He makes it clear these are people - people that could be your neighbors, your teachers, your family. Or you. Every thread of the story follows this theme, and as such things tie up quite nicely by the end.
So yes, it was an entertaining book, and I will probably end up reading the other two, though I am weary of the massive page count, just because of Larsson's love of superfluous detail. But clearly this story is going some place really interesting, and I want to know where that is.
This is the first book of the best-selling Millennium series by Stieg Larsson, who died in 2004, at the age of 50, of a heart attack. It was published in Swedish in 2005 and in English in 2008. The Swedish title is Män som hatar kvinnor (Men who hate women), which is more descriptive of the story but perhaps less appealing to potential readers.
It's a long but engrossing book about the mysterious disappearance of a teenage girl and the deaths of a series of other women, which a journalist (Mikael Blomkvist) is paid to investigate, although the events took place in the fairly distant past and were long ago dropped by the police.
Blomkvist accepts the help of an eccentric young tattooed woman (Lisbeth Salander) who happens to be an expert at infiltrating computer systems, and the two of them are the main characters of the story. There's an unrelated subplot about a crooked businessman (Hans-Erik Wennerström), who at the start of the book has just won a libel action against Blomkvist.
The story takes place partly in Stockholm and partly in and around the fictional town of Hedestad, on the coast “a little more than an hour north of Gävle”.
As I've lived in Stockholm myself, I was amused to recognize a number of the street names and a restaurant referred to in the text. Familiarity with Sweden in general and with Stockholm in particular isn't necessary when reading this book, but it adds a little something.
The book gives a distinctly unflattering portrait of Swedish society. Readers may come away with the impression that most Swedish men are evil or unpleasant, and that Swedish women are eager to jump into bed with the first non-evil man they can find, but are touchy, unpredictable, and hard to cope with.
My own impression of real-life Swedish men and women has been completely different. However, our hero Blomkvist is relatively normal, and similar in personality to some Swedish men I've known.
There's some unpleasant violence in this book, most of it in the past and so not described vividly, but some of it happens in the present in the course of the story.
On two occasions in the book, Salander (who is unusually small and thin) physically attacks evil men and gets away with it. Although in both cases she has a weapon of some kind and her opponent hasn't, at close quarters a weapon can be countered by an unarmed man with quick reactions, so I reckon that some goddess must give her luck when she needs it.
This book has an interesting story to tell, and it's a page-turner once it gets going, but it's not really my kind of novel (it was given to me as a present). The best thing about it is the character of Lisbeth Salander, who's eccentric, touchy, unpredictable, and aggressive, but intelligent and courageous and somehow likeable underneath. I don't feel an active desire to meet any of the other characters again. Blomkvist is amiable but, as a hero, not particularly interesting.
(Review written in 2009)
I honestly don't know why it took me so long to get around to reading this little international phenomenon, it wasn't because I didn't have access, my sister loaned it to me months ago. Something just kept me from it, maybe it was fear of the bandwagon, who knows. It certainly has a strong following, almost Tha Da Vinci Code-like, more than one person saw me carrying it and had to talk about it, which never happens to me.
The one thing that we all agreed on was that it started slowly. Like cold molasses slow. It was either brave or foolhardy of Larsson to start off his book with a detailed and plodding description of a financial crime. Hardly the kind of thing that sucks you in. Not only that, that type of crime doesn't seem to match up with the cited statistics about assaults on females in Sweden that are so prominent. When, after more than 200 pages into the novel, when we finally do get our first assault on a female, it comes across as perfunctory.
The book follows the path of 2 protagonists–Mikael Blomkvist, a financial reporter with a superiority complex, and Lisbeth Salander, a young investigator for a security company whose talents far exceed her appearance and age. Blomkvist is in the middle of some legal trouble, which has forced him out of the news biz for awhile, so he takes a job researching a decades-old missing-persons case for an aged, reclusive industrialist. Salander's dealing with her own legal and personal issues, and apparently the near universal belief that horribly thin girls with tattoos and piercings are stupid and unreliable.
The book plods along, almost but not quite capturing my interest until soon after obligatory (yet unnecessary for either plot or character development) assault that the two finally meet, and then–finally the plot begins to pick up. The two join forces and quickly uncover clues that lay hidden in plain sight since the fateful day when the industrialist's niece disappeared. These lead them to the trail of a serial killer.
Larsson gets both the investigator and the reporter to discover the killer's identity at about the same time, when, naturally they are miles away from each other. This leads to both being in some kind of jeopardy. But honestly, I didn't once feel any tension, it was clear that the jeopardy would be thwarted without permanent damage of any kind being inflicted.
Things were tied up in a tidy, and somewhat satisfactory bow, and the further along in the novel, the better things moved. But there's really little to recommend the book on. Blomkvist reads a lot of detective fiction, usually dropping the name of the author and title along the way. There are at least two mentions of a Val McDermid novel. And as many problems as I have with her stuff, it's a darn shame that Larsson didn't pay more attention to her, he could've learned how to make even an obvious conclusion not seem entirely forgone, and with enough tension and suspense to spare. The “Thriller” label that's applied to this book is very misplaced.
Why bother to finish it? Curious to see what all the fuss was about, really. Also, the Salandar character was intriguing enough. Which is why, incidentally, I started the sequel.
Just re-read this one. The epitome of Nordic Noir for me. Glorious pacing, and more believable characters than many other authors I've encountered in the genre.
This started out slow. Slow enough for me to consider stopping. Glad I didn't, it turned out to be a really decent mystery. Felt like it floundered a bit after the big reveal, but that's a small quibble.
Also: someone needs to go through and systematically count how many sandwiches are consumed in the course of this novel.
Post Script Also: What the hell is wrong with Swedish sandwich ingredients? Pickled herring, mustard, and chive sandwich? Stieg Larsson wants you to be acutely aware of how stinky his protagonist's breath must be.
I really enjoyed this book! I found Larsson's writing to be engaging and interesting despite the length of this book, and the complexity of family saga intertwined with white collar crime. I had incredibly low expectations of this book since I hated the title and I hated the cover, but thought I would give it a chance. I'm so glad I did, and will definitely be looking for the rest of the trilogy now.
Mikael and Harriet are particularly likable characters. Erika Berger is still somewhat of an enigma to me, though her situation is quite unique. I'm still on the fence about Lisbeth, who is complicated—to say the least—and sometimes tormented. Her humanness really emerges at the end of the book, though, so I'm curious to see how it'll carry over into the next novel.
Through and through, this is a book I would highly recommend—but only for those with a strong stomach who aren't easily disturbed.
I think a little is lost on people not familiar with Sweden. However, this story included interesting characters and a good mystery.
A great read! Fast-paced, entertaining and informative. Interesting characters. A pity the author died before his series became a bestseller.
I decided to finally get on board with the hype. The book starts of pretty procedural (I kept thinking, yes Larsson, you did a lot of research, good for you, now move it along) but it got faster after that. A little too long, but overall good for what it is.
This book made me love this author. He's amazing!!! He had such a great imagination that nobody had. All the characters were well defined and I enjoy the story. I didn't like the sex scenes and I had to turn the pages, but I loved all the rest. It's sad that the author died without continuing the series of 7 books he had planned to write.
I was way more interested in the Vanger-centric mystery than the Wennerstrom-centric one, so once the Vanger one was resolved, the last 75 pages or so draaaaaaaaaaaagged. Overall, though, good not-too-deep mystery/thriller.
Highly readable, much talked about. Larsson set out to show men who hated women getting their comeuppance, so there's some very gratuitous scenes of violence to make his point. However, it disturbs me greatly that his idea of the opposite of “hating women” is Blomkvist, a serial womanizer with trouble keeping his pants on. I would have much preferred someone who appreciated the women in his life, respected them, and didn't see them as sex toys first.
The mystery in this novel is not the most compelling. It's pretty predictable once all the main characters are introduced. But like all mysteries, what's most important are the characters. Blomqkvist, Salander, and especially the Blomqvist/Salander partnership make you want to keep reading. My favorite contemporary mystery writer is Elizabeth George, and this book shares many similarities with her work, especially grisly sex crimes and a detective partnership that crosses significant class and education boundaries (with the male partner the senior one and the one on the privileged side). Larsson's special appeal is his attack on corporate greed and his severely damaged champion of justice, Lisbeth Salander.
The 100 pages of interesting stuff was simply not enough to convince me this book was deserving of all the praise it received.
Amazing character development. Impeccable, yet believable plotline.
It does take about the first 30% of the book, to actually get into the story, which was kind of annoying. Still, it was a decent thriller. The drama is what I enjoyed more than the plot twists. I never knew I could admire someone like Salander. Thankfully, there's more of her left. Yay!
Fits the dictionary definition of “cracking read”. Once the ball started rolling I couldn't put it down.
As much as I enjoyed it I struggled with a couple of things: 1) I don't know how to pronounce non-Arabic letters in Swedish so I was constantly distracted when I was trying to figure out what words sounded like. I got better towards the end of the book, but it bugged me early on.
2) “Kalle Blomquist”. I didn't look it up until after I finished. A solid American parallel is “Encyclopedia Brown”. This bugged me every time I saw it and I'm a dummy for not looking it up sooner.
Interesting characters, a wonderful setting, and layers upon layers of mystery that consistently unfold until the very end. It's not a roller coaster ride, more of a hike through tough but beautiful terrain.
If this book were one hundred pages shorter and contained twenty fewer characters, I could have been down. As it stands – woof. There were so many (needless!) references to the names of different characters and locations that at times, I felt I was in the word problem section of the Swedish SATs.