My Unsolicited Review of "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo"

The truly pathological readers that I know have been gushing about The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. With all the media buzz and the impending movie, I've actually been ordered to read it. So, I did. In a word, my opinion of it is "eh."

That's blasphemy, I know. Everyone's flipping out over this book. Maybe it's because it was published posthumously. Maybe it's because he was Swedish and we Americans are amazed that other countries actually have their own novelists and stuff. I know not. All I can say is that I don't think it deserves all the kudos. It's a good story and the characters are interesting but, as the old saw goes, "the story is in the telling" and it's not told very well. Of course, that doesn't mean much; Stephanie Meyer made herself a household name by revising the "vampire rules" and recycling old Buffy angst to make an undead monster with uncontrolled blood-lust look like good boyfriend material. So, what the hell do I know? I'm sure the Larsson estate will be rolling in kronas. More power to them. I'm just not impressed.

The story was good though it was a bit anticlimactic. The subplots could have been worked into the main story a little more, giving it a bigger build-up towards the end. But, alas, we had chapter upon chapter of wrap-up. And, truth be told, the climax was a Hollywood director's wet dream. I actually predicted some of the plot twists but that might just be because I'm a genius. I don't want to spoil the ending for the seventeen other people who haven't read it yet, so I won't say anything else on plot. Suffice it to say that I liked the story well enough.

The writing, though, was weak, especially given the seismic orgasms that everyone seems to be having over it. I thought it was dry and methodical. Larsson, having been a journalist, was probably used to explaining things in a clear, concise manner, which is probably why his fiction is an exercise in exposition. The book is rife with passive, explanatory language, making it seem distant and impersonal. He tries to present some extremely visceral things and makes it read like a scientific journal article. It's all tell and no show. He invented some colorful characters and then painted them in greyscale.

Descriptions are cursory and not very evocative. They give you the setting but don't pull you into it. It's sort of like the props in an elementary school play; they're just kinda there. What he does expound on are pointless details and veritable laundry lists of actions ("She did this. She did that. Then, she did the other thing.") Sentence after repetitive sentence of ways and means with nothing with which to empathize. He also had a tendency to sprinkle in brand names and, in particular, he loved to recite computer stats. At one point, I thought I was reading a Best Buy ad. It's like the work of an author who's a gun enthusiast and insists on detailing bore sizes and muzzle velocities in the middle of a gunfight. Or, the cook who gives us a handy recipe. Steig liked his computers and he did his homework. Fantastic. If it doesn't advance the story, it just sounds like pandering.

His use of foreshadowing is blatant, almost patronizing. It's one thing to give the reader a hint of what's to come, it's quite another to bash him over the head with an announcement that something big and important is coming up in the next paragraph. It came off as very amateurish (and, since I'm an amateur, I would know.)

There's also a lot of unabashed proselytizing in it. All writers inject their own views into their work, but the good ones make it a part of the story. Larsson unloads unvarnished diatribes about the Swedish economy and social systems and personal injustices like...well...like a journalist. You don't make good chocolate chip cookies by dumping a pile of chips in the middle of the dough and spooning it out. You gotta work it in.

My biggest bitch with the book is Larsson's frequent, frenetic changes in the point-of-view. I could never tell who's eyes I was looking through and his expository dronings made it even more confusing. He flipped from one character to another in some nebulous, omniscient narrative voice and I found myself backtracking all the time. A book doesn't count as a page-turner if the pages are going in the wrong direction.

So, to put it in brainless-teenage-girl lingo, I liked it, but I didn't like it like it. Good story, mediocre book. The movie might actually turn out better. I'll read book two, but I don't think it won't keep me awake at night.