Book me fail... The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

[byslantedlight]

I'm not doing very well with this one, I'm afraid - I'm not particularly enjoying it at all, which is odd, cos two people recced it, and someone else said it was on their to-read list! So what's gone wrong...

I think, for me, it's the writing style - I feel as if the story is being explained to me, rather than told in a way that makes me imagine it, makes me feel like I'm watching it, or a part of it, which is really why I read at all... For example:
Blomkvist regretted his decision before even he left for home, but by then it was too awkward to call and cancel. So on the morning of 26 December he was on the train heading north. He had a driver's licence but he had never felt the need to own a car.

or
Instead of giving Salander the boot, he summoned her for a meeting in which he tried to work out what made the difficult girl tick. His impression was confirmed that she suffered from some serious emotional problem, but he also discovered that behind her sullen facade there was an unusual intelligence. He found her prickly and irksome, but much to his surprise he began to like her.

It doesn't sound too bad in isolation like that, but page after page of it leaves me feeling kind of tired rather than interested to find out next... Why do I need to know the thing about the driving license? It just makes me stop and think you told me this because...? And I'd like to see the meeting with Salander, rather than be told about it, if you know what I mean...

Also, so far the characters are all absolutely perfect - Blomkvist has fallen for some trap, but he's a fine, upstanding man, has money, enough charisma to be on tv, is almost certainly good-looking. Salander is pretty but quirky, incredibly clever but rebellious, again charismatic "despite" being sullen and teenager-like. She's young, and turns up to work only when she wants to, is brilliant enough that she earns enough to do whatever she wants (including only working when she wants) and she also has time to visit sick mother in hospital and treat her with patience and tender care... Gaaargh! I'm waiting for the bad guy to be seen kicking a puppy, to be honest...

But there has to be a reason this book - trilogy in fact - is so well thought of. Does the plot turn out to be fabulous? Or...?

I might have to put this one down (I didn't say I had to finish every book on the list - and life's too short to be that bored... *g*) but I'd still like to know why other people like it so much?

Comments

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

I know! And you know, I was really expecting to like it, I really liked the sound of what you said about it... I like the idea of a wider view of a nation and its corruptions - I guess I just don't take it in as well if it's explained to me, as I do if I'm shown it in sweeping colours and tears and sighs...

I didn't mind Salander, to be honest I don't have much expectation of her at the moment - I think she's going to fall exactly where I expect her to fall, rather than surprising me with unexpected humanity... Maybe she won't, maybe I'm totally wrong, but that's the impression Larsson's given me so far...

Interesting about the translator - I did wonder if that might have something to do with it, except that it seems to have had as much adulation in the translation as it presumably did in the original...

Swedish crime fiction, though, is never what you'd call sprightly and a laugh a minute
Heeee! See, that's totally not what I was expecting. I adore dark, melancholic fic, and slow atmospheric fic - stories where you can wade through the emotion... and that doesn't mean that the emotions have to be described in great swathes of words, or detail, but... I've got to be able to feel it... I'm just not feeling Larsson, even though I want to! Or... maybe what I'm feeling is so even, as Jojo said above, that it's just not moving me as I want a story to move me...

Come to think of it, I'm absolutely the same with fanfic - I don't care if a story is clever, or a plot idea is shiny new and twist-y - I want to be moved by it...

I'm quite curious to read something by another Swedish author though, just to see if it's a cultural view thing, or specific to Larsson... Interestingly enough, I can absolutely imagine this made into a Hollywood blockbuster, a la The Pelican Brief etc....

[lukadreaming.livejournal.com]

This probably sounds odd, but I didn't care about it moving me. It *grabbed* me instead. I adored the attention to detail with all the three parts of the series interlinking. It's slow, it needs editing with a pick-axe, but I didn't care *g*.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's interesting, the difference between moving and grabbing... So - how do you feel when you're grabbed? Like - your attention is grabbed, you're interested, you want to find out more? Or...?

[lukadreaming.livejournal.com]

Yes *g*. I have to keep reading, I desperately want to know what happens next, and how it will all be resolved. Being moved is more of an emotional thing. Books often *do* move me, but not as often as they grab me *g*.

A crap book might move me, but it might not necessarily grab me!

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Oh, see I think I'm the other way around - a book somehow needs to "move" me, I think, in order to "grab me". I've got to have some reason to be interested, some... visceral place where a connection is made in order to find a common interest and thus a desire to keep reading... *g*

A crap book never moves me - and it rarely grabs me!

[solosundance.livejournal.com]

Actually, the being "grabbed" was what my book club folks nearly all said ... even if they weren't into it in other ways, or weren't moved or whatever. Strange isn't it that you can be grabbed by something that's also, as you say, slow. I can relate to that bigtime, although the earth just didn't move for me with this one :)

[lukadreaming.livejournal.com]

It's really interesting how varied reactions are to the book! The third one is painfully slow, but by then I was so desperate to know how Larsson was going to resolve it, that I forgave him a lot.

I think, as well, that I read too much formulaic or frankly downright ropey crime fic. So something a tad different tends to perk me up no end *g*.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

See, that's probably why I often avoid the genre at the moment - random fic is often formulaic... I had a phase of really enjoying Alaskan-set crime stories (before and just as I went to Alaska, of course... *g*) but I think before that it was probably Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh and all, way back when... Those babes did it so well that the more stereotyped stuff is kind of a let down, there's got to be something else to it that grabs me...

[lukadreaming.livejournal.com]

I'm interested in writers doing something different with the genre. John Morgan Wilson, who has an alcoholic, HIV+ gay journalist as his hero, restored my faith in crime fic *g*. I'd done an MPhil on gay and lesbian crime fic, and boy, did I read some dross!

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Wow - sounds quite the combination! Worth taking a look then, you reckon?

[lukadreaming.livejournal.com]

Yep! It's an awesome series. Last one is a touch weak, but the rest are outstanding.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Hmmn, d'you have a link? I'm not getting anything when I search for that author at Amazon.co.uk...

[lukadreaming.livejournal.com]

That's odd -- he's showing up for me when I type his name in!

Two links for the first in the series (in print and on Marketplace) here and here .

Series in the correct order is:
Simple Justice (1996)
Revision of Justice (1997)
Justice at Risk (1999)
The Limits of Justice (2000)
Blind Eye (2003)
Moth and Flame (2005)
Rhapsody in Blood (2006)
Spider Season (2008)

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Oh interesting... so there was something that made them want to read more, even if they weren't into it with any kind of connection... Hmmn, I'm trying to think of a book that grabbed me without moving me - and ooh, actually, The Naked Civil Servant is probably a good example - I was absolutely interested to find out what happened to Crisp, but his writing didn't move me at all...

Maybe I just don't have enough interest in crime books these days to be that interested in how-they-did-it, whereas how someone survived a particular period of their life does...