I never read popular books. Ever. My arrogant rule of thumb is that if a book is palatable enough for the general public to enjoy it then it’s surely dumb and formulaic. So I decided to take a risk and read the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the first of Steig Larsson’s wildly popular mystery trilogy set in his native Sweden. It came highly recommended, as I knew it would, but I decided to read it because the heroine, Lisbeth Salander, seemed like a badass and even if the plot was shit I thought I would at least enjoy her character. Unfortunately this book confirmed my prejudices against reading anything popular. It was a quick and easy read, but I found nothing ground breaking or even particularly enjoyable. Salander was supposed to be paradoxical, but it felt as though Larsson just couldn’t decide what to do with her. She is a 25 year old motorcycle riding computer genius, but also a ward of the state considered by the government to be mentally incapable. She earned that diagnosis from a knack for violent behavior in grade school and keeps it because she refuses to participate in therapy or even speak in the presence of authorities. Instead of coming off like a badass refusing to play by the rules she seems like an idiot for not acting in her own defense to regain control of her life and finances. She shuns the idea of love in favor of promiscuous sex, but instead of a sense of liberation and freedom her fifty plus sexual partners and dabbles in prostitution make her seem disturbed and helpless. Her Goth clothes and mohawk fail to remain cool when balanced with reminders that she looks like she’s fifteen and is constantly described as “anorexic”. Where I was perhaps foolishly expecting an Angelina Jolie type action hero we have a lonely scared orphan who can barely run her own life though she’s an expert at ruining other people’s. This could have worked if Larsson didn’t attempt to pass her off as an Angelina Jolie type action hero.
The second protagonist is Mikael Bloomkvist, a financial journalist who at the beginning has been convicted of libel and sentenced to prison time. Salander has been keeping tabs on him throughout his media heavy trial and knows that he purposefully didn’t defend himself. She knows this because she has hacked onto his computer and found that he has more than enough evidence to back up his claims against the powerful speculator he’s accusing of fraud or something. Honestly, I know all Wall Street creeps are criminals, but the financial jargon in the book went straight over my head. Anyway, Salander is fascinated by him, and she is eventually hired to help him solve a forty year old murder that he was hired to work on by the patriarch of one of the most powerful families in Sweden. The head of the Vanger family wants Bloomkvist to find out what happened to his niece, who disappeared under mysterious conditions. Vanger worked on the case for many years until it became an obsession, but by the time we meet him he’s getting old and is desperate to solve it before he dies. The two protagonists don’t meet until over halfway through the book and as I was reading I kept thinking “please don’t make them sleep together, please don’t make them sleep together” but of course predictably my wish wasn’t granted. When Lisbeth finally seduces Mikael by practically forcing him to have sex with her the book was all over for me. Bloomkvist is a chronic womanizer twice her age and he sleeps with almost every female character in the book. I don’t know what Salander’s type is, but he’s not it. She knows all of his indiscretions, but seems to find the sheer number of women he’s slept with sexy. I understand that some women do feel this way, but everything about Lisbeth’s character prior to this indicates that she finds such men disgusting. For some reason that I think was supposed to be romantic it doesn’t bother her in Bloomkvist. When they first sleep together he tells her that he doesn’t have any condoms and she replies “Screw it.” Maybe that was supposed to seem romantic as well, but to me it was just another bad decision in the string of horrible choices that is Salander’s life. Imagining a nasty old man having sex with a disturbed girl that looks pubescent left me cringing every twenty pages or so, struggling to understand what the author was attempting to convey.
The plot actually ended up being the most engaging part of the novel. I’m usually not a fan of mysteries, but the dead ends, false starts, and revelations regarding the case of the long missing girl kept me reading despite the contradictory and flat characters. One thing that I found particularly interesting was the strong feminist message, which was very surprising coming from a male author. Each chapter beginning had a statistic about crimes against women in Sweden, and men who abused women were the villains. The passionate rage with which Salander tortures a man who rapes her and the tenacity with which she fights against men who have mistreated women are the most genuine parts of the book because we come closest to how the author feels. This made it all the more confusing to me when at the end of the book Salander falls in love with Bloomkvist (sorry if I just spoiled something for you, but trust me, you’d have seen it coming from a mile away). The ending took whatever redeemable qualities I was trying to see in the book and killed them. Salander decides that after solving such an important case and using her awesome spy skills to steal a lot of money from the crook that put Bloomkvist in prison she needs to turn her life around. Instead of remedying her incompetency ruling with the Swedish government she decides to clean her apartment and tell Bloomkvist that she’s in love with him. She buys him a kitschy Elvis thing as a gift on the way to his apartment when, lo and behold, she seems him walking into his building with another woman that he’s clearly about to go screw. She’s crushed and throws Elvis into the dumpster and walks away. I know that feminism can’t save a girl from a broken heart, but the Salander that I imagined wouldn’t have been dumb enough to make such a mistake, or would have at least beaten the shit out of both of them just for good measure.
There have already been film versions of all three books made in Sweden and the American version of the first book will be in theaters around Christmas. I read Lynn Hirschberg’s article about the film in the February 2011 issue of W magazine. She had some of the same problems with the book that I did, and declared that the screenplay was better than the book. Movies almost never even compete with the books they are based on, so I found this claim very interesting. David Fincher, the director of Fight Club among other popular movies, is directing. What struck me most about the article were the photos of the unknown actress, Rooney Mara, who is set to play Lisbeth. First I was impressed by Fincher’s good decision to use an unknown rather than the many celebrities that auditioned for the part (Scarlett Johanssen?) and second the girl looks fucking cool. Even better than how I had imagined Lisbeth. Black mohawk, bleached eyebrows, piercings and tattoos galore, size 000, and exactly the right amount of androgyny to be both beautiful and ugly, dangerous and vulnerable. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the movie might be where I find the mindless yet enjoyable entertainment that I was looking for in the book. The plot is nothing spectacular, it will not contain genius dialogue or meditations on the human condition, but at least visually I’m expecting a stunner. Several pictures from her spread in the magazine are now taped to my wall. Maybe they’ll help me get through the next two installments, which I’m sure I’m going to force myself to finish.
