I've recently finished reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and I have Opinions About ItTM. None of which are particularly novel or interesting, I expect, but since when has that ever stopped anyone in the blogosphere?
I don't generally like reading books translated from languages I know, because I always find myself going into "revision mode", and focusing more on the translation choices than on the story. I particularly dislike translations into US English: I guess it's because Americanisms seem much more jarring if the book's in a French/German/miscellaneous European setting. But it's going to be a while before my Swedish is good enough to read it for pleasure, so for the time being I'm stuck with translations.
This really isn't a very well-written book. That's partly down to the translation*, but most of the blame lies firmly at the feet of Stieg Larsson. It's full of horribly clumsy info-dumps: I get that little details can add atmosphere, but in parts it reads like an Apple advert.
I mean, seriously?
And then there's the pivotal plot point that involves Mikael's daughter, who we're told has recently got into Christianity, seeing a list of five-figure numbers with no other context - written by her atheist father - and not only immediately assuming they're Bible references, but knowing off the top of her head what verses they refer to. I find this... unlikely.
But that's not the main issue I have with the book. It's also a very violent story, but that, in itself, is not the problem either: the original Swedish title is Män som hatar kvinnor, or "Men Who Hate Women", which pretty much tells you what to expect, and in any case I'd already seen the film with Noomi Rapace. What bothers me is that it clearly sets out to be a feminist novel, one about violence against women rather than glorifying it, but it doesn't actually live up to its aims.
The whole focus of the novel is on women as victims and/or sex objects. We have two serial killers who torture women to death - women who we know nothing about except their extremely gruesome ends. We have a young woman abused by her father and brother. And the female protagonist is violently raped, for absolutely no reason connected with the plot.
The male protagonist, meanwhile, is inexplicably irresistible to basically every woman he meets. Blomkvist is presented as a thoroughly decent chap who just happens to be "a big hit with women", but something didn't sit quite right about him. I was particularly uncomfortable with the scene where he first meets Salander: he essentially barges into a complete stranger's flat and starts criticising her housekeeping and poking around in her stuff. But it's all OK, because he likes women!
And then there's Lisbeth Salander herself. On one level, she's a pretty kick-ass character. The trouble is, she's also pretty unrealistic - almost a cartoon superheroine. She's tiny, and "anorexically thin", but manages to take down a grown man using a golf club. She has a photographic memory, is a genius hacker, can speak flawless "Oxford" English and excellent German... and is apparently obsessed with her (lack of) breasts. Apparently, she gets breast implants in the second book, which, what? Why on earth would she do that?
So, umm, yeah. It's not a terrible book. In fact, this quote from the epilogue, about Blomkvist's book, is quite fitting:
The trouble is, that feminist fury doesn't make up for the other issues. And that's really disappointing.
*I hesitate to criticise the translator, because I gather that he is himself very unhappy with the way his text was edited by the publisher, but the fact remains that, whoever's fault it is, the translation as published is Not Good.
I don't generally like reading books translated from languages I know, because I always find myself going into "revision mode", and focusing more on the translation choices than on the story. I particularly dislike translations into US English: I guess it's because Americanisms seem much more jarring if the book's in a French/German/miscellaneous European setting. But it's going to be a while before my Swedish is good enough to read it for pleasure, so for the time being I'm stuck with translations.
This really isn't a very well-written book. That's partly down to the translation*, but most of the blame lies firmly at the feet of Stieg Larsson. It's full of horribly clumsy info-dumps: I get that little details can add atmosphere, but in parts it reads like an Apple advert.
"The rucksack contained her Apple iBook 600 with a twenty-five-gig hard drive and 420 megs of R.A.M., manufactured in January 2002 and equipped with a thirty-five-centimetre screen."
"He put the pictures in a separate folder, opened the Graphic Converter programme, and started the slide show function."
"After that he opened a crime novel by Val McDermid entitled The Mermaids Singing."
I mean, seriously?
And then there's the pivotal plot point that involves Mikael's daughter, who we're told has recently got into Christianity, seeing a list of five-figure numbers with no other context - written by her atheist father - and not only immediately assuming they're Bible references, but knowing off the top of her head what verses they refer to. I find this... unlikely.
But that's not the main issue I have with the book. It's also a very violent story, but that, in itself, is not the problem either: the original Swedish title is Män som hatar kvinnor, or "Men Who Hate Women", which pretty much tells you what to expect, and in any case I'd already seen the film with Noomi Rapace. What bothers me is that it clearly sets out to be a feminist novel, one about violence against women rather than glorifying it, but it doesn't actually live up to its aims.
The whole focus of the novel is on women as victims and/or sex objects. We have two serial killers who torture women to death - women who we know nothing about except their extremely gruesome ends. We have a young woman abused by her father and brother. And the female protagonist is violently raped, for absolutely no reason connected with the plot.
The male protagonist, meanwhile, is inexplicably irresistible to basically every woman he meets. Blomkvist is presented as a thoroughly decent chap who just happens to be "a big hit with women", but something didn't sit quite right about him. I was particularly uncomfortable with the scene where he first meets Salander: he essentially barges into a complete stranger's flat and starts criticising her housekeeping and poking around in her stuff. But it's all OK, because he likes women!
And then there's Lisbeth Salander herself. On one level, she's a pretty kick-ass character. The trouble is, she's also pretty unrealistic - almost a cartoon superheroine. She's tiny, and "anorexically thin", but manages to take down a grown man using a golf club. She has a photographic memory, is a genius hacker, can speak flawless "Oxford" English and excellent German... and is apparently obsessed with her (lack of) breasts. Apparently, she gets breast implants in the second book, which, what? Why on earth would she do that?
So, umm, yeah. It's not a terrible book. In fact, this quote from the epilogue, about Blomkvist's book, is quite fitting:
"It was uneven stylistically, and in places the writing was actually rather poor [...] but the book was animated by a fury that no reader could help but notice."
The trouble is, that feminist fury doesn't make up for the other issues. And that's really disappointing.
*I hesitate to criticise the translator, because I gather that he is himself very unhappy with the way his text was edited by the publisher, but the fact remains that, whoever's fault it is, the translation as published is Not Good.
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