The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, a Review.
As you may already know, I'm a bookworm. I love all sorts of books, provided that they're good and engaging in my eyes. I've been reading for a very, very long time first in French then in English, and I read everything from children's novels to graphic novels to beloved classics. I just love to read stories and adventures, whether fiction or not.
So, here I am, writing a book review on a novel by Stieg Larsson, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo or Men Who Hate Women.
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a genre buster, I do believe. It's essentially a mystery novel, but it dives into other genres at its leisure. At one moment it's this horror filled tale that could make grown men shake in their boots, in the next, there's people talking about feelings. However, despite its changing moods, it flows perfectly from one moment to another, and it never has a dull moment to speak of.
The novel centres on a investigative journalist named Blomkvist, who co-owns a financial magazine called Millennium (which explains why the trilogy is so named) things had been going well enough for the small time magazine, until Blomkvist is convicted of libel against a powerful business man,Wennerstrom, it earns him three months in jail and throws his magazine into the depths. However, a retired, once powerful CEO of a company has a job for Blomkvist; this CEO's beloved niece, Harriet Vanger, had gone missing in 1966 at sixteen some forty years ago and the case has remained unsolved for that time. To add insult to injury, the CEO, Henrik Vanger of the Vanger Corporation, has received a pressed flower in a frame every year since 1967, which is exactly the gift his niece had given him since she was eight. He believes that this is the killer of Harriet is mocking him with these flowers.
Blomkvist is hired to discover what truly happened to Harriet. In return, he will be paid a few million kronor for his services and Vanger will give him information that could bring down Wennestrom and restore hope for Millennium.
In the meantime, another character has her story. Lisbeth Salander is a brilliant, anti-social twenty five year old woman who is mentally unstable. She's short, thin with black short cropped hair and numerous piercings and tattoos. Most distance themselves from her. Lisbeth is extremely anti-social to the point that her employer thinks it's a feat when she smiles at something. She works for an security company and does private investigations for multiple people. She discovers dark secrets and terrible memories as a part of her job.
So here are our protagonists, Lisbeth and Blomkvist. Both are wonderfully flawed, mostly regular people who work hard and have very distinct personalities. While Blomkvist is a known womanizer, Lisbeth detests being touched. Lisbeth can is an experienced, frighteningly good hacker, while Blomkvist is simply a regular journalist, though he is well known. They are polar opposites, and this is why they are perfect partners later on in the book.
The novel was called Men Who Hate Women originally for a reason. The book shows violent act after violent act against women, from rape to grotesque murders (in most cases, both.) It even goes back to Leviticus with the origin of the violence in the murders we are told about. showing that people will use any excuse to harm a woman, by masking it with religious fanaticism, they can pretend like they were doing 'good' which is, of course, beyond disturbing and digusting. It makes a very big point of why such violence is terrible, and how it affects the lives of the victims and their families. In fact, every separate 'part' begins with a statistic of how many women are sexually assaulted or harassed every year in Sweden, and then some statistics on what they do about it.
The book is intricate, details are important and little things you thought were one thing turn out to be the exact opposite. You learn things as the characters do, and so you can't accurately guess what is happening because it's prone to change. And that, in a mystery novel, is awesome.
Suspenseful is probably the best word to describe the novel. You'll devour its 800+ pages in no time at all, finding yourself inexplicably at the end when you wanted it to go on. It's that good. You'll find the characters sympathetic and very human, you'll enjoy learning about their lives and how they handle themselves, and it never really breaks your suspension of disbelief. The writing flows easily and perfectly; it's simple and almost reporter-like, but it fits the tone of the novel very, very well.
I'd definitely recommend it to any book lover, and I'd also urge you to see the film. It's wonderful, and the actors hit their characters to a T.
I look forward to reading The Girl Who Played With Fire very soon.
So, here I am, writing a book review on a novel by Stieg Larsson, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo or Men Who Hate Women.
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a genre buster, I do believe. It's essentially a mystery novel, but it dives into other genres at its leisure. At one moment it's this horror filled tale that could make grown men shake in their boots, in the next, there's people talking about feelings. However, despite its changing moods, it flows perfectly from one moment to another, and it never has a dull moment to speak of.
The novel centres on a investigative journalist named Blomkvist, who co-owns a financial magazine called Millennium (which explains why the trilogy is so named) things had been going well enough for the small time magazine, until Blomkvist is convicted of libel against a powerful business man,Wennerstrom, it earns him three months in jail and throws his magazine into the depths. However, a retired, once powerful CEO of a company has a job for Blomkvist; this CEO's beloved niece, Harriet Vanger, had gone missing in 1966 at sixteen some forty years ago and the case has remained unsolved for that time. To add insult to injury, the CEO, Henrik Vanger of the Vanger Corporation, has received a pressed flower in a frame every year since 1967, which is exactly the gift his niece had given him since she was eight. He believes that this is the killer of Harriet is mocking him with these flowers.
Blomkvist is hired to discover what truly happened to Harriet. In return, he will be paid a few million kronor for his services and Vanger will give him information that could bring down Wennestrom and restore hope for Millennium.
In the meantime, another character has her story. Lisbeth Salander is a brilliant, anti-social twenty five year old woman who is mentally unstable. She's short, thin with black short cropped hair and numerous piercings and tattoos. Most distance themselves from her. Lisbeth is extremely anti-social to the point that her employer thinks it's a feat when she smiles at something. She works for an security company and does private investigations for multiple people. She discovers dark secrets and terrible memories as a part of her job.
So here are our protagonists, Lisbeth and Blomkvist. Both are wonderfully flawed, mostly regular people who work hard and have very distinct personalities. While Blomkvist is a known womanizer, Lisbeth detests being touched. Lisbeth can is an experienced, frighteningly good hacker, while Blomkvist is simply a regular journalist, though he is well known. They are polar opposites, and this is why they are perfect partners later on in the book.
The novel was called Men Who Hate Women originally for a reason. The book shows violent act after violent act against women, from rape to grotesque murders (in most cases, both.) It even goes back to Leviticus with the origin of the violence in the murders we are told about. showing that people will use any excuse to harm a woman, by masking it with religious fanaticism, they can pretend like they were doing 'good' which is, of course, beyond disturbing and digusting. It makes a very big point of why such violence is terrible, and how it affects the lives of the victims and their families. In fact, every separate 'part' begins with a statistic of how many women are sexually assaulted or harassed every year in Sweden, and then some statistics on what they do about it.
The book is intricate, details are important and little things you thought were one thing turn out to be the exact opposite. You learn things as the characters do, and so you can't accurately guess what is happening because it's prone to change. And that, in a mystery novel, is awesome.
Suspenseful is probably the best word to describe the novel. You'll devour its 800+ pages in no time at all, finding yourself inexplicably at the end when you wanted it to go on. It's that good. You'll find the characters sympathetic and very human, you'll enjoy learning about their lives and how they handle themselves, and it never really breaks your suspension of disbelief. The writing flows easily and perfectly; it's simple and almost reporter-like, but it fits the tone of the novel very, very well.
I'd definitely recommend it to any book lover, and I'd also urge you to see the film. It's wonderful, and the actors hit their characters to a T.
I look forward to reading The Girl Who Played With Fire very soon.