I came pretty close to giving up on this book. It starts well, with Blomkvist's trial and conviction for libel, and introduction to Salander. I quickly became bored once Blomkvist started his investigation into Harriet due to the huge number of pages devoted to boring narrative history of a seemingly endless parade of Vanger family members:
In 1926, when he was nineteen, he was going out with a woman called Margareta, the daughter of a teacher in Falun. The met in some political context and had a relationship which resulted in a son, Gottfried, who was born in 1927. The couple married when the boy was born. During the first half of the 30s...
If this information is really important (it isn't), then why not do it in the first person as a series of flashbacks? I also found it quite disconcerting to have this mind numbing verbal family tree cut with the brutal violence of Salander's experience with Bjurman. The violence with Bjurman was extremely graphic, and seemed to be the typical setup for harsh vigilante justice - think Batman's parent's murder.
After this point the story gets much better, Blomkvist makes progress in the investigation, and Salander joins Blomkvist (albeit in a fairly contrived way). I read the second half of the novel in one sitting and thought it was great.
It was interesting to read a 'very Swedish' novel with great placenames I don't know how to type on this keyboard. I did feel the unwelcome presence of product placement - many references to 'iBook', 'Ikea', and others I can't remember. I also usually cringe at any descriptions of 'hacking' in the media, but those in this book were at least better than average.
3.5 stars.
Update: Just saw the movie, it is brilliant. I was really dreading the rape scene, and I thought they took the violence too far in the movie, it is really, really uncomfortable to watch (and should probably be R). However, the rest of the movie is great: it is entirely in Swedish, Salander is perfectly characterised, it isn't a commercial for Sweden (although there is plenty of Apple product placement), and the 'hacking' is believable, which is more than I can say for most movies. As an aside - Salander's screen shows '/var/lib/dpkg' directory listings, which indicate a linux system (probably Debian) - on a Mac 'fink' is based on dpkg but shows up in '/sw/var/lib/dpkg'. Lookie ma, I'm hacking:
$ find /var/lib/dpkg
/var/lib/dpkg
/var/lib/dpkg/alternatives
/var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/xinput-zh_SG
/var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/tclsh
/var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/wx2.5.pth
/var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/cpp
/var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/vi
/var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/xinput-zh_HK
/var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/libgksu-gconf-defaults
/var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/odt2txt
/var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/kdesu
/var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/rcp
/var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/postmaster.1.gz
/var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/locate
/var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/wish
I have read a few Swedish crime fiction novels and the ones I have read seem to be edited badly, or translated badly, I can't tell. I thought that this book was maybe a 3 star book, but could have been much better with some tighter editing and if a few pages were chopped off. I thought Salander and Blomkist were good characters and I have requested the next book from the library. I agree with your comment about the first half being a bit boring, I had got it from the library before and it didn't hold my interest, but this time I had a few hours to read so I kept going and found it steadily more engaging.
ReplyDelete3 stars for me too - enough to give the next book a go. I too wondered about the translation vs editing issue - someone was a bit slap-dash in any case. Interestingly the Swedish name of the book means 'Men who hate women' which explains the stats on domestic violence, rape, etc. quoted at the beginning of each section. The English title (excellent marketing ploy i suspect) suggests that the book is primarily about Salander which is a bit misleading - maybe she'll have a bigger role in the later books ...
ReplyDeleteI have just been reading the next book - The Girl who Played with Fire - I think it's much better than the first book, and hard to put down. It's much more immediately engaging because you already know Salander. And this book is more about Salander and her background - which is compelling. This book also showcases her fighting skills, instead of just her hacking skills. If you liked the first one, you'll probably like this one too.
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