The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson. Murder mystery with Scandinavian flavor. Minor spoilers.
Mikael Blomkvist is a reporter who has been convicted of libel. He is approached by Henrik Vanger, a wealthy industrialist, to investigate the forty year old disappearance of his niece Harriet Vanger. Blomkvist, having some significant down time due to his impending jail term and damaged professional credibility, takes on the assignment and the game is afoot.
I sussed out the mystery about two hundred pages before the end and had an inkling about what it would be long before that. The book’s title in Swedish is The Men Who Hate Women. The anglicized title actually refers to Blomkvist’s partner Lisbeth Salander. She is a pint-sized, maladjusted hacker. She is a victim of abuse and does not trust authority figures for good reason. Blomkvist may be the hero of the book but Lisbeth is the star. The book named after her because she is the most striking character in it. Her life experience and her reaction to the abuse she has suffered are reflective of the major theme of the book – that violence against women is common and constant. The book relates parallel tales of how women respond to abuse. They can fight, they can run or they can just take it and remain silent.
The title change strikes me as the reverse of the change to The Return of the King. Tolkien’s original title, The War of the Ring, was illustrative without giving away the ending like The Return of the King does. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is illustrative of important subject matter without giving away as much as The Men Who Hate Women would have – or does if your super smart older brother who has already read the book and is dying to get you to read it can’t help throwing you hints.
Blomkvist is the David Copperfield of the book. He is not in himself that interesting. His motivations are never in doubt, his personal code is forthright and righteous. He’s good at what he does, people tend to like him and women want to sleep with him. He’s also a bit of a goody two shoes. The people he meets and works with are vastly more interesting. Blomkvist is important because characters all around him keep trying to influence or use him. His moral simplicity leads to a fraught choice in the latter stages of the book. I was gratified that his easy decision-making was muddled. It made him more interesting as a protagonist. It is simple for him to chase knowledge, to find out what happened. His dilemma comes when he has to decide what to do with what he discovers. Salander plays an important role in helping him reflect on the consequences of being too honest.
The translation I read is quite good. There are passages where the translator was too literal. In several places English idioms could have been inserted instead of single transliterated words. The only reason I knew what “anon” meant was my decades of experience at renaissance fairs trying to sound olde fashioned. “Later” or “by and by” would have been preferable. The odd formality that the language takes on at times is distancing. It serves as a reminder that these characters are foreign and creates a distancing effect. This was probably less pronounced for readers who speak British English but I imagine it being a more serious issue on this side of the pond.
The mystery was gripping, the investigation felt real. I loved the pace of the novel. The action occurs over the course of a year. I appreciated that they didn’t solve a forty year old mystery in forty eight hours. A must read.
-fh