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Last night I finished reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and boy were my feelings mixed.
This will be a spoiler-free review, for anyone who hasn't read it, but the comments will be a spoiler-friendly zone.
So. The book attempts to talk in a positive, deconstructive manner about classism, sexism, sexual abuse, and rape culture. It also wants to be an exciting thriller. Does it succeed at either?
... Maybe?
The fist hundred plus pages are dull as dirt setup. I almost gave up three or four times, and had concluded that all the hype about this book was baseless bullshit. Then, when the action began, I changed my mind again, and again, and again. There's one Wham Line in particular, where the male protagonist talks to his daughter, that had me say "Oh, shit" out loud as soon as I understood the ramifications. The titular girl, Lisbeth, is a fascinating character, with some ambitious complexities, and a straight-up badass besides in several affirming ways. Despite several subversions of trope, however, there's still a Hell of a lot of problematic material surrounding her, and while it mostly worked for me, I'm in a nice comfy position of privilege. The author was clearly trying to highlight real problems surrounding the exploitation of women, and doing that without, you know, exploiting the women in the narrative is hard. I expect a lot of mileage is varied in reactions to this one. I can't talk about the iffiest bits of sexual politics in this without spoilers, but suffice to say the male protagonist's obvious role as an author insert Did Not Help.
The prose is often stale (which may be partly a translation issue), reminiscent of Michael Chrichton at his most infodumpy, but the action scenes and emotional punches are handled better. And I was much happier with the actual, physical crisis point of the book, which was not at all the formulaic thing the author was telegraphing -- good job on the change-up, Stieg.
In any case, I'm intrigued enough that I want to read the second book and watch at least the Swedish version of the movie.
This will be a spoiler-free review, for anyone who hasn't read it, but the comments will be a spoiler-friendly zone.
So. The book attempts to talk in a positive, deconstructive manner about classism, sexism, sexual abuse, and rape culture. It also wants to be an exciting thriller. Does it succeed at either?
... Maybe?
The fist hundred plus pages are dull as dirt setup. I almost gave up three or four times, and had concluded that all the hype about this book was baseless bullshit. Then, when the action began, I changed my mind again, and again, and again. There's one Wham Line in particular, where the male protagonist talks to his daughter, that had me say "Oh, shit" out loud as soon as I understood the ramifications. The titular girl, Lisbeth, is a fascinating character, with some ambitious complexities, and a straight-up badass besides in several affirming ways. Despite several subversions of trope, however, there's still a Hell of a lot of problematic material surrounding her, and while it mostly worked for me, I'm in a nice comfy position of privilege. The author was clearly trying to highlight real problems surrounding the exploitation of women, and doing that without, you know, exploiting the women in the narrative is hard. I expect a lot of mileage is varied in reactions to this one. I can't talk about the iffiest bits of sexual politics in this without spoilers, but suffice to say the male protagonist's obvious role as an author insert Did Not Help.
The prose is often stale (which may be partly a translation issue), reminiscent of Michael Chrichton at his most infodumpy, but the action scenes and emotional punches are handled better. And I was much happier with the actual, physical crisis point of the book, which was not at all the formulaic thing the author was telegraphing -- good job on the change-up, Stieg.
In any case, I'm intrigued enough that I want to read the second book and watch at least the Swedish version of the movie.
