The book club decided to jump on the "everyone's reading it" bandwagon with this month's selection of Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. A long-time frequenter of just about every best seller list imaginable--from the time it was published in 2008 to today--this Swedish novel sparked our interest, and we decided to see just what was so special about the first in this three-part mystery series.Robert Dessaix of The Sydney Morning Herald describes the book as such: "An epic tale of serial murder and corporate trickery spanning several continents, the novel takes in complicated international financial fraud and the buried evil past of a wealthy Swedish industrial family. Through its main character, it also references classic forebears of the crime thriller genre while its style mixes aspects of the sub-genres. There are references to Astrid Lindgren, Enid Blyton, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, as well as Sue Grafton, Val McDermid, Elizabeth George, Sara Paretsky, and several other key authors of detective novels. A journalist and magazine editor in Stockholm until his death, Larsson reveals a knowledge and enjoyment of both English and American crime fiction. He declared that he wrote his opus for his own pleasure in the evenings after work."
Did the book club agree? The members who took part in the meeting seemed divided: some liked it and were already on the second and third books in the Millennium Trilogy; others didn't know what all the hype was about. Buy the book on Amazon.com if the intrigue of this mystery has pulled you in, then post your thoughts below!
I definitely stand on the side of not knowing what all the hype is about. It went in waves of holding my interest and not; it started off slow, picked up around page 50, then lost me again with endless detail about the Vanger family that I just couldn't keep straight (and frankly, didn't want to). I also wasn't a fan of Larsson's writing style in general; as we discussed in the meeting, it was too cut-and-dry or matter-of-fact--do we really need an entire paragraph devoted to the amount of RAM in Lisbeth's new Mac laptop?--and it made his descriptions feel lifeless and unnecessary to me. As we mentioned, perhaps this had something to do with its translation from Swedish to English, but unfortunately, I was not a fan.
ReplyDeleteI had mixed emotions about the book in general. I also was not thrilled with the writing style, however the mystery part of it swept me up. It wasn't a book that I felt as though I couldn't put down... in fact it was the opposite. I put it down and picked it back up frequently. I did like Blomkvist and Salandar though for the most part, even though I didn't buy into everything written about them (if that makes sense). I will always be aggravated that Salandar didn't go to the police after she was raped, especially considering she had physical evidence. How could they not slant that in her favor? I was bothered.
ReplyDeleteI was intrigued enough to read the second book, and I must say that I liked that one better. It didn't have anything to do with the Vanger family, Wennerstrom, or Blomkvist for that matter. It was all about the scandel behind Salandar's life, and it paints the picture of why she's so mistrusting of the authorities. It's an interesting read if you can get past the unrealistic fact in this book that private investigations have more information at their disposal than police investigations. You have to like the characters in order to attempt this book, because the writing style is (obviously) no different, and again there is superfluous information. Though maybe not quite as much. I'm hesitant to say too much about the second book, being that I don't want to spoil it for those of you that would still like to read it. I will say that it was a cliff hanger, and now I'm invested in reading the final of the trilogy.