Some of my TV hit from yesterday is available online. I’ve got a quick take on the Adrian Gonzalez/White Sox rumor on Rumor Central. My morning wrapup piece is now up as well.
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Question: If Stieg Larsson had lived to see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Mikael Blomkvist is a crusading journalist in Stockholm who, at the book’s opening, has been found guilty of libel and sentenced to three months in jail after a big expose he ran on a leading Swedish businessman turned out to be based on fabricated information. Blomkvist is then summoned to meet the patriarch of the Vanger family, Henrick, who wants to employ him to write the family history and use that as a ruse to dig around the forty-year-old disappearance of his niece, Harriet Vanger, who is presumed dead but whose body was never found. Henrik used a private security company to run a background check on Blomkvist, and the report was written by Lisbeth Salander, the inked girl of the book’s title, a brilliant loner with issues and a serious (but seemingly justified) hatred of men. Salander and Blomkvist end up working together on the Harriet case for Henrik, for their own curiosity, and for the potential to save Blomkvist’s publication, Millennium, which ran the discredited article.
The story flies by, even though Larsson hasn’t overpacked the book with action sequences. There’s just one major protagonist-in-jeopardy episode, and much of the remainder of the investigation part of the book covers Blomkvist and Salander’s efforts to unearth information on the Vanger clan, since they’re working a very cold case in which modern investigative techniques aren’t that useful. Following Blomkvist as he navigates some of the odd personalities associated with the case is interested for fifty pages or so, but it’s not enough to sustain the narrative, and Larsson eventually has to push the plot forward with some “aha” moments and discoveries. I finished the book inside of 96 hours, and that one bit where Blomkvist is nearly killed is a heart-pounder.
The main problem with Girl is that it’s not so much a detective story or thriller as it is a revenge fantasy. Larsson piles injustices on both his two main protagonists and on unseen victims, then takes out the crooks and the creeps one by one in clinical fashion. I admit to seeing a certain satisfaction in watching Blomkvist and Salander – particularly Salander, who is almost sociopathic in her vengeance, although I imagine Larsson intended to make it seem more obsessive/therapeutic – bring justice to bear on the baddies, but it also made for a cliche-ridden plot with only one really surprising twist (one that was actually foreshadowed at the book’s opening, although Larsson did a nice job casting doubt on that initial suspicion).
Those two protagonists are also somewhat thinly drawn. Blomkvist is atonal – he’s not perfect, as he’s consistently reckless in his personal liaisons and many of his professional choices, including the one that nearly gets him killed – but he’s roughly as interesting as a glass of water. Salander is far more interesting as the brilliant freak with the mysterious past, driven by some unknown but unpleasant episode from her childhood, but her absurd memory and skill with computers remove doubt from the reader’s mind – she breaks every code, obtains every file or photo, remembers every detail. Flawed detectives have to work to solve a case. Salander just has to breathe.
The prose is just atrocious, although I’m not sure how much is Larsson’s (he was a journalist by trade, not a fiction writer, and I think it showed in his wording) and how much is just a bad translation from the original Swedish:
Finally he opened his shoulder bag and put his iBook on the desk in the office. Then he stopped and looked about him with a sheepish expression. The benefits of living in the countryside, forsooth. There was nowhere to plug in the broadband cable. He did not even have a telephone jack to connect an old dial-up modem.
Larsson loaded the text with irrelevant details that don’t set the scene or elucidate anything about the plot or characters; that sort of self-editing is critical to any novel but particularly one in the detective genre. He also degenerates into dimwitted populism that reminded me of why I stopped reading Michael Crichton after two books:
“The Stock Exchange is something very different. There is no economy and no production of goods and services. There are only fantasies in which people from one hour to the next decide that this or that company is worth so many billions, more or less. It doesn’t have a thing to do with reality or with the Swedish economy.”
I mean, aside from the inherent ignorance of what the purpose of a stock exchange is, and the omission of the fact that personal wealth in any capitalist economy is going to be at least partly driven by the movement in the equity markets, Larsson (speaking through Blomkvist) really nails it.
Would I recommend the book? It’s a fast and entertaining read, and if that’s what you want from your novels, then you’ll enjoy it. I’ll probably check out the sequel, The Girl Who Played with Fire
Incidentally, friend of the dish Levi Stahl disliked the book far more than I did. I at least enjoyed the reading, but the prose seems to have made Levi quite angry.
Next up: Wayne Curtis’ And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails
non – related. the phoenix ranch market. do you eat at their restaurant, tradiciones, or in any of the markets? I’m scratching my head where this great food is physically located.
In the market at the counter. Tradiciones was kind of disappointing – not bad, but nothing special.
Keith,
Interesting and I can’t disagree with, though I flat out loved the book and the story and found it quite satisfying – I will say that you learn a lot more about Lisbeth in very satisfying ways in the next book, and I’m eagerly awaiting the third.
MG
I believe that whiskey is distilled from the essence of beer. Or, at least, the History Channel kept calling the mixture from which whiskey is derived “beer” in its recent Modern Marvels on the whiskey industry.
It’s whiskey. The grain used is very similar, though I am assuming the yeast is at least a little different.
Keith- in the Rumor Central article it said Konerko would go to the Angels. In your analysis, you said he doesn’t make much sense for the Padres.
Did I read it wrong, or was it a typo?
Chuck – I didn’t see the RC entry, was just asked by my editor about a Konerko/Gonzalez/Padres rumor. Not that Konerko would make much more sense for the Angels, but at least they have a spot for him.
Whiskey is the correct answer.
this is like a deli but mexican food? I just asked a friend who has lived in phx his whole life and has never eaten there. we are a little skeptical (on my short list now) but want to make sure this is right. you’ve been to more than one location? I think there are 5.
It’s a supermarket with a large prepared-foods section. I’ve been to two locations and found the food to be the same but the space at the one near the airport (16th/Roosevelt, I think) is much easier to navigate. Huge selection of Mexican cookies and pastries and maybe 8-10 agua fresca flavors each day.
Surprised your friend hasn’t heard of it – it’s a big favorite on chowhound, for example.
Keith, because you have a great eye for both literature and future OPS leaders, I think you will enjoy the second installment in Larsson’s series in that the reader becomes much more intoned to Lisbeth’s psyche and the way in which her personality has come to be formed. Blomkvist, while still the protagonist, plays a lesser role to Sandler’s primary function as the character with whom we the reader follow and relate. Larsson brings to the story a number of new personalities that need to be unraveled while maintaining a focus on those that we already know – Lisbeth Sandler and Mickael Blomkvist, in a story of intrigue and government espionage.
Dead on. The writing is not just mediocre (and again, this may be the translation) – its just awful. Horribly, horribly awful to the point where I wanted to put the book down. The characters are non-existent, the random expositions of text (describing the RAM in the Macbook?), the general blahness of the characters – I hated, hated, hated this book. 😉
I know that this is more than two years old, but I feel it’s worth commenting- I agree that the writing was not good, but it is not necessarily the fault of the translator. Reg Keeland is a pseudonym- Steven T. Murray did the translation, but the publisher edited it so badly and “British-ized” it so poorly that he took his own name off of it for fear of being associated with such terrible writing.
One website mentions it here: http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2008/01/putting-words-in-dragons-mouth.html (just to prove I’m not making this up), and more mentions can be found via google.