Review of Stieg Larsson's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

THE MOST COMPELLING MYSTERY IS HOW THIS BECAME A BESTSELLER

I am part Swedish. When I heard all the buzz about The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, by the Swedish author Stieg Larsson, I was enthusiastically rooting for its posthumous literary success. However, as I made my way through the crime novel, I felt as if a crime were in progress--my own murder! The prose is so egregious, the characters so cardboard-cutout and humorless, and the plot so weighed down by exposition, that it left me baffled as to all the positive blurbs that adorn the deckle edged work. Did these reviewers even read the book, or were they paid off by the marketing machine? Who knows? Who cares? Who will dare to unravel the mystery?

I must give kudos to the publisher and the rest of the team who have made this and the other books in the series international bestsellers, especially after the unfortunate death of the author. To catapult any fiction to the top of the charts is quite an accomplishment. But when the original writer is no longer working behind the scenes, it makes it that much more astonishing.

That said, I must get on with my honest review, and the stunning fact that this vapid text could be dressed up and hyped up so much so as to get people to fork over their hard-earned money and be happy that they did so. Like others have already stated, at first I thought the problem might be the translation. However, there are serious errors that go beyond the Swedish to English rendering. The narrative is laden with a constant bombardment of trivial information that detracts from the story. For instance, there is the odd repetition of mundane, technical references:

"After discussion with her mother they had agreed to give Pernilla an iPod, an MP3 player hardly bigger than a matchbox which could store her huge CD collection" (74).

"Malm had worked in PhotoShop, and it took a moment to notice that the building was floating in air" (101).

"At lunchtime Salander booted up her iBook and opened Eudora to write an email...To be on the safe side, she ran the message through her PGP encryption programme" (104).

"He wanted to know whether the connection could handle ADSL and was told that it would be possible by way of a relay in Hedeby, and that it would take several days" (139).

"The family was so extensive that he was forced to create a database in his iBook. He used the NotePad programme [...], one of those full-value products that two men at the Royal Technical College had created and distributed as shareware for a pittance on the Internet" (168).

I appreciate technology as much as the next person. But if it doesn't add to the narrative, the characters, or enhance the reading experience in some way, it becomes mud. I realize the heroine, Lisbeth Salander, is a fantastic hacker, but still... these trivial references are unnecessary.

The story also degenerates into frequent reports on the weather (as if one's in a terribly boring conversation and this is all that's left to discuss--did Larsson have the soothing Weather Channel on in the background while writing these sections?):

"The thermometer outside the window said 5 degrees F, and he couldn't remember ever feeling so cold as after that walk..." (138).

"The temperature had dropped to -1 degrees F" (140).

"He had several miserable days in the middle of the month when the termperature dropped to -35 degrees F" (184).

"Then the weather changed and the temperature rose steadily to a balmy 14 degrees F" (185).

"The thermometer showed 6 below zero" (141).

Now, to be fair, I have only managed to muck my way to page 202. Perhaps the rise and fall in temperature will have some vital link to the plot. Perhaps the characters will come alive. I will be sure to let you know if I manage to survive until the end of the book. I am hoping that somehow, miraculously, the novel will redeem itself. If it does, that would be the most astonishing thing of all.

FOLLOW UP--I SURVIVED THE ATTEMPTED MURDER!

Just recently, at a social event, I heard people talking about how great the Swedish movie version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is (I haven't seen it), and how the book is "supposed to be even better." I thought of entering the conversation, but decided it better not to. It is very odd, how marketing and the consequent bandwagon following can make a book that should have been re-edited or relegated to the slushpile a blockbuster. I think it would make a very intriguing sociological study--just how did the Swedish publisher get the ball rolling on this one? I'll admit that the plot got a bit better (I did finish the book), and I did like the character of Lisbeth Salander. The writing, however, did not improve as the mystery unfolded. In the end, this story strikes me as a typical crime thriller that you would find on cable TV. There is no real depth to it, and at the end one wonders: "why did I waste my time with that?"

I hear Hollywood has caught the Larsson fever--I wonder what they will do with the series. To be sure, they will be megahits, as long as they market them like crazy, which they will. The build-up has already begun. Just today, as I was shopping at Costco, strolling towards checkout, I saw them: the familiar, bright, shiny, eye-catching, and admittedly--very cool covers. And while Costco couldn't sell them in a 24-pack, they sure did try--inundating the innocent bystanders with stacks and stacks of Larsson's trilogy, tempting shoppers to take them home with their sundry bulk purchases.

I passed, guilty of the crime of not speaking up.