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Book #58 Hosted by KateThe Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (originally titled "Men Who Hate Women") is a translated Swedish book and the 1st in a series called “The Millenium Trilogy”. The other two book are titled, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. There is a 4th book which is in "negotiations". Larsson's partner of 30 years, Eva Gabrielsson, has the authors laptop with the manuscript of the 4th novel (she has said was a planned 10 book series) in a "safe place". She will not turn it over to the estate unless she get guarantees that the rights to the books are distributed "as he would have wished". Stieg never left a will and his brother and father were actually suprised that the estate reverted to the family. Gabrielsson says Larsson's father and brother were eager to cash in on the sudden success of the books, but is hoping that her rights will prevail in the end. ~Support Eva website
About the Book
The book has two story lines. The first is the mystery into the possible murder of Harriet Vanger, a member of the prominent Vanger family, who disappeared from a gathering on the remote family owned island in Sweden. The second is that of a disgraced financial journalist sentenced to jail for libeling a shady businessman. Stieg Larsson blends these two stories together through the characters of Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander, an unorthodox investigator.
About the Author
Stieg Larsson's first murder mystery has been a smash hit throughout Europe since its 2005 publication in the author's native Sweden, and has now become a bestseller in the U.S. as well. But the bitter twist in Larsson's success story is that he didn't live to see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo published: he died of a heart attack just after he delivered the manuscripts for this book and the two that follow. ~Barnes and Noble
The Girl Who Played With Fire
Stieg Larsson's seething heroine, Lisbeth Salander, once again finds herself paired with journalist Mikael Blomkvist on the trail of a sinister criminal enterprise. Only this time, Lisbeth must return to the darkness of her own past (more specifically, an event coldly known as "All the Evil") if she is to stay one step ahead--and alive. The Girl Who Played with Fire is a break-out-in-a-cold-sweat thriller that crackles with stunning twists and dismisses any talk of a sophomore slump. ~Amazon Book Review
Män som hatar kvinnor
The Swedish film version of the best selling novel is now released in USA theatres.
The Los Angeles Times: "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" is "a mind-bending and mesmerizing thriller that takes its time unlocking one mystery only to uncover another, all to chilling and immensely satisfying effect."
The Washington Post: "It's the rare 2 1/2 -hour film that doesn't make you look at your watch once. 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' is such a film.... like a good book, the plot is so engrossing, the characters so rich and complex, the mood of gloom mixed with glimmers of hope so all-encompassing that the thought of its actually ending never occurs to you.... For fans of the thriller genre, it's also one heck of a lot of fun."
A Hollywood remake is in the works for Stieg Larsson's international best-selling book "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."
6 comments:
Read the book, saw the movie, liked the book, liked the movie better! Ok so it took me a while to get into this book and past the weird translation, but I was entertained. If you thought the book was graphic, don't see the movie, parts of it were disturbing. I'm strangely intrigued by Lisbeth and her life and will read the next three books. With that said, would I recommend it? Probably not. Still glad I read it since it's the buzz book right now.
This was a very interesting read. The graphic subjest matter was strong and sex seemed to be an the overall theme and it varied from violent rape to unwilling prostitution to the enjoyment of love making. It reminded me of reading Against Our Will by Susan Browmmiller when I was in my 20's. It redefined rape as a violent act and opened many discussions about violence against women, etc. Hard to believe that it was only in the 70's that this simple connection was made as a male control over females.
It was almost overwhelming with the violence but I found myself feeling somewhat detached from he horror and was fascinated with the book's concept and writing. So fascinated that I went and bought the second book and will definitely read the 3rd. I am not sure I will like the movie as it is such a strong visual book that it will be hard to watch someone else's vision
It was full of so MANY minute details that really didn't matter and sometimes it was almost like a marketing commercial. But this helped bring a normal aspect into a harsh story.
I wondered how the translation from Swedish to English affected it.
The nuances of different cultures and crime added to book layers and for someone who hated Lovely Bones...I surprised myself.
The second book really helped smooth out the first one and didn't seem as rough.
The first time I heard of the book was in an article in the Economist magazine. The magazine focused on the financial/corporate crime aspect of the book, agreeing with the character Blomkvist that most journalists working in the area of corporate finance act more like cheerleaders rather than thorough investigative reporters. Case in point being most of the celebrated journalists at CNBC. That is what got me intrigued about the book - that it is a story of an investigative reporter uncovering corporate crimes and conspiracies. I should have suspected something as the subtitles for all the chapters talked about violence against women. In fact the Swedish title of the book is "Men who hate women". However I continued reading with blinders on, and when this book turned totally Silence of the Lambs on me, I was completely taken by surprise. I can't handle the kind of gruesome crimes described in the book, and I probably wouldn't have read the book had I known. Having said that, I agree with Kate, that this book did not disturb and haunt me the way Lovely Bones did. One reason I think is that in this book all the horrrific crimes are presented as such - horrific aberrations committed by deranged and evil people. The crime of Lovely Bones was presented as very matter-of-fact, almost normal occurrence. The people in Lovely Bones book dealt with it as they would have if the girl had died in an accident, and not as a result of a brutal crime. Larsson started writing this series as his "retirement plan" that is he clearly meant to write something that would grab attention and build readership. Sadly, we are so inured to horrific crimes these days that a simple Agatha Christie type murder wasn't going to sell books. One affect of this is also that the crimes in this book seem "manufactured" to me, and maybe that is why they were easier for me to dismiss.
Despite the goriness the book was an enjoyable read. The start was slow and choppy but once it got going, it was hard to put down. All the characters, even minor ones, such as the graphic designer at the magazine, were fully fleshed out and interesting. The descriptions of the places were detailed and lovely. The plot was a bit overdone for me but still it kept developing and unfolded sharply. It is hard to believe that nobody in the Vanger family even suspected all this, esp because the crimes had been going on for so long. Still, the solving of the muders was carried out well with a detailed investigation. The solving of the corporate crime aspect of it had the feel of deus ex machina to it. Salander just hacked into the computer and got all the details. Still, I am tempted to see the movie and read the rest of the books.
New York Times ran a long piece on Larsson and his life recently, if you are interested. They do say that his writing and plot construction improved so each book in the series is better constructed than the previous one.
The Times piece really put an additional spin on this series that I enjoyed reading. The drama behind the author after his death could have been weaved in his books. Was there a ghost writer? How come his other published works did not match the style of his novels? Why didn't he leave a will? Was he really estranged from his father and brother? Did he have dalliances or affairs that were rumored? Is that why he did not marry his long time partner?
At first I thought it was odd that he wrote the 2 sequel books before he submitted to a publisher. But his overall focus was a borderline autistic/Asperger syndrome heroine's life, which could have become more complicated as he started out to write it. Also, were all the "detailed details" added to spread out the novel?
The second book seems as if it was the middle part of a story expanded. I am expecting the 3rd novel to be an end to the focus on Lisabeth's complications but...there is that rumor of the fourth half done book also...
The idea that he was going to fund his retirement with writing books is believable. How many of us have had the same idea now that publishing is less expensive and so prolific? LOL
The NY Times piece was a fascinating read. Larsson's life to be an intriguing story with an interesting cast of characters of its own. I found sex-life of Blomkvist in the book to be very intriguing - he has relationships with multiple women but you couldn't call him a womanizer. Yet the author has written it in a very matter-of-fact way. This made me think that it could not have been imagination and that strange sense of morality had to come from the author himself. I guess I am saying that I believe the gossip about Larsson having relationships with multiple women. The article also says that Larsson named characters after real people. I wonder who he modeled Salander after.
FYI. Here is an update on the casting of the Hollywood version of the movie for the Millennium Series .
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