A couple of co-workers were talking about how this book was really good. They sold it as a mystery which immediately made me think - great I won't like this one (I'm not a huge mystery fan). But I looked on Amazon and the reviews were all favorable. I'm going to have to say I didn't really like it. Maybe 2 out of 5 stars.
The book dragged for me. There were endless descriptions of things that didn't really matter. He took practically two pages to describe the interior of a cabin. The whole story seemed convoluted. Was it a murder mystery? A corporate thriller? Was Larsson trying to make a point about how often women are abused? I don't know... the book tried to do too many things. The funny thing is if he had stuck with the murder mystery it would have been good. I liked the parts where Mikael and Lisbeth are trying to unravel what happened to Harriet. It's the rest of the book that bogs it down.
I'm struck by how violent the book is towards women. Lisbeth is raped by her guardian. Harriet is raped by her father and her brother. And SPOILER: The Vanger family has a history of murdering and ill-treating women. If I'm reading this book correctly, then half of the women in Sweden have been abused at some point. Doesn't exactly read as a tourist advertisement for a Swedish vacation. The thing is - I felt like some of the mistreatment was gratuitous... there for the reaction or the shock value. Larsson goes into detail of Lisbeth's rape and the aftermath yet in the end the rape has little to do with the plot of the story other then to illustrate the fact that Lisbeth feels cut off from "normal" society. Maybe I'm not into mystery's because of the violence but within moderation and when it enhances the basic plot I wouldn't be gasping and making a point of it in my review. The violence in the book was over the top and I felt like often only used for shock value and not to help the plot.
Speaking of more unnecessary parts of the book - Mikael basically sleeps with any and every main character in the book if it happens to be female. There's absolutely no point. I don't feel like he's in love with any of them. I don't even really like Mikael or his one sex partner - Erika because Erika is married and her husband finds it acceptable that every now and then she and Mikael still have sex - what??? Really? And honestly, none of his sexual escapades again have anything to do with the plot other than to tie up another 50 pages of nonsense.
The corporate thriller part of the book dragged for me. The bad guy (I can't remember his name because all the names are Swedish) is obviously dirty. You learn pretty early on there is a spy working for Mikael. And really you can assume from the beginning that if given the chance Mikael will take bad guy down (sorry - I'm too lazy to look up his twenty character Swedish name).
Apparently there are two more books in the series. I already have the second one - had placed it on hold before I read this one. I'm not sure I'm going to read it. I'm not sure who to recommend this book too - maybe if you like mystery's but the mystery in my opinion is just okay. There's really no satisfying reason as to why the guilty party or parties were committing the murders (SPOILER) other than the fact that they were sociopaths who got off on that sort of thing. I feel like it was a bad six part episode of CSI where at the end you find out the killer was the lady next door and she did it because she was bored. Lame.
Note of warning - aside from the graphic rape scenes. The book is written in Swedish and translated to English. Meaning - it reads like a book that wasn't written in English, and you have to try to struggle through a lot of place names and character names that are Swedish. The author gives you a family tree in the beginning of the book but a map of Sweden would be helpful. I never knew whether Mikael was going down the block or four hours away.
So no, I'm not going to rave about how great this book is despite the many reviews saying they think it is great. I feel like it's one of those books that people read and after struggling through you sit back and think that's interesting and then immediately toss it out in the yard sale bin but brag to all your friends you read it because it happened to make some best-seller book club pick somewhere. Have you read it? What did you think?
No comments:
Post a Comment