The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Just finished it yesterday. My husband said, "Did you like it?"
I scrunched my face up and just looked at him for a second. Then I said, "Parts of it...I liked parts of it."
The truth, after Entertainment Weekly put the book on the cover of their magazine, touting it is the number one book on the planet, well, I bought the book. I figured, hey, I live on this planet and I haven't read it yet!
More truth, I forced myself to read the first 250 pages. The magazine cover repeatedly flashed in my mind as I trudged through the book, teasing me...The REST of the whole planet loves this book...what is the matter with YOU?
The author adores complicated back story -- as in, he probably bathes in it, letting it sink into his body via open pores until he becomes one with the uber-rich-details of his characters' lives. I nearly required toothpicks to keep my eyes open as I plodded through those pages.
Once I weeded out the necessary stuff for the story to continue making sense I got to some relatively exciting parts -- but for the love of heaven, it took such a long time to get there. And the names...the countless character names...there are SO MANY characters. The only two I really cared about were the main guy and of course, the girls with the dragon tattoo. She was a deeply flawed, ass-kicking, wickedly brilliant character. I liked her.
After I finished reading, the scenes that stuck with me were the over-the-top violent scenes -- especially the ones involving women. Those scenes were incredibly disturbing and, in my opinion, glorifying violence against women. Each scene had deeply misogynistic undertones.
To me - the strangest part - the author started out each new section of the book with a Swedish statistic on violence against women. It was like he was trying to be anti-violence in one vein and then in the other vein pumped ultra violent blood. Weird.
I wish I could write to him and ask him to clarify, but he passed away before any of this success. Sad, eh?
Bottom line, I'll read the next book in the series because I like Lisbeth (THE girl). But, I'm going to read a book or two in between because the thought of jumping back in to his back story-rich writing exhausts me.
