No, I'm not twelve years late in making some sarcastic comment on the transition from the twentieth century and into the 21st, thus neatly ticking over from the second millennium to the third. I refer, of course, to the Stieg Larsson trilogy about a socially inept woman who manages to become embroiled in all kinds of intrigue, which I finished reading this morning.
I've mentioned them a couple of times in my recent posts but mainly wrote about the US movie of the first book, and the character Mikael Blomkvist. I shall now attempt to redress that balance.
The the matter of Blomkvist, I will add only that his relationships do become a little implausible after a while... Or is it just a sense of jealousy that this fictional character (whose work ethic, overall morality and general stubbornness are not dissimilar to my own) attracts the attention of the kind of women who are not afraid to act on their impulses? Strong women who, while not necessarily as confident as they try to appear, are nevertheless not constantly falling victim to their own insecurities. In fact, if Larsson's female characters are any representation of Swedish women, perhaps I should up sticks and move to Sweden.
It seems unfair to describe even Lisbeth Salander - the titular 'girl with the dragon tattoo' - as the main character in any of the books... In the first book, she's largely peripheral - a researcher who gets recruited into Blomkvists investigation into the murder of Harriet Vanger. By the second book, the story has outgrown her. She's one of many characters in a complex subterfuge that began before her birth. She spends much of the last book incarcerated in one way or another, with everyone else running about around her, seeking to help or to hinder, to break the plot open or to keep it concealed. Nevertheless, she is a key character.
One thing that struck me is that her dragon tattoo is only described in any real detail once... and that's about halfway through book three. That description does not fit either the photographs on the books' covers or the appearance of the tattoo in both the original Swedish movie and the US remake. In the book, it's a full-colour tattoo (red, green and black), and seemingly quite large. In the US movie, it occupies only part of her shoulderblade and it's black only. Seems like a bit of a gaffe to me, but that's movies for you...
It's also interesting to note that I found her significantly less likeable in the books than in the US movie, precisely because so much of the book is given over to her internal monologues. She's a moody, inflexible, judgemental bitch who doesn't even try to interact with people most of the time. Then again, who could blame her, given what she'd gone through? The topic of Asperger's Syndrome comes up in book three (if not earlier), but is only discussed as a possibility. We see her interest in all kinds of esoteric fields of mathematics and physics and, while they're a fairly logical extension of her other activities, there's little in the way of connection because Lisbeth doesn't understand these aspects of herself.
She's described as very moral. She looks after those she cares about, always repays her debts... but her morality also extends to punishing those who wrong her and, if she can get away with it, those who generally do wrong. To me, it seems inconceivable that she wouldn't try to involve the authorities in some instances, but it's very carefully explained that she has excellent reasons for not doing so... Yet still, it nags.
Nowhere near as bad as the few Harry Potter books I read, which always ended up getting flung across the room as I screamed "just fucking speak to fucking Dumbledore you fucking halfwit!", but it does nag.
The depiction of a newspaper office in the final book felt eerily familiar. Not that I've worked on a newspaper, but the bickering, infighting, arrogance, lack of cooperation, vindictiveness and general immaturity seems to be more common than I'd thought, and the board-level stupidity is certainly nothing new: "Short term loss for long term gain? What madness is this?" pretty much sums up the attitudes of the upper echelons of my former employers - more concerned with their own pay packets and bonuses in the here and now, than the long-term viability of the company and its products.
Shady Government Agencies are becoming rather clichéd these days, but Larsson's take on the subject was quite chilling in its application of logic, even when the world had changed around it to the extent that its continued existence was its greatest weakness. By the time the necessary action is taken, events have progressed so far that the're forced to follow a path which has only one possible conclusion, though there were a couple of occasions that I thought they might be more successful that they were... Particularly when they zeroed in on one specific character, as I'd heard a rumour to the effect that the character in question did not live till the end of the book.
But Larsson doesn't muck about with limp deus ex machina. When his problems are solved, they're solved through quick thinking and timely action and, more often than not, there's (the impression of) a good chance of failure. Switching rapidly between multiple points of view and reliving the same periods of time from each perspective cranks up the tension quite successfully.
There's one other aspect that nags at me, though. A good portion of the second book relates to mathematical puzzles, then there's a tiny snatch of dialogue near the beginning of book three about an injury that might affect one's ability to deal with such puzzles. It transpires that no such effect has occurred, except in one specific instance of memory loss which is, quite literally, a moot point. The dialogue hint felt very heavy-handed and, with no corroboration with later events, rather pointless... yet I'm sure it was meant to accomplish something.
While all three books tended to drag at the beginning, once they got going, I did find them rather difficult to put down. Several times, I'd get to the end of a chapter and think "OK, I'll just take a peek at the first part of the next chapter, then go to sleep" only to find myself reading to the end of the next chapter, and making the same deal with myself all over again.
Larsson's characters are well-drawn when they need to be - he doesn't devote undue amounts of time to their backstory until such time as it becomes important, Erika Berger being a prime example. Parts of her life are well and truly 'in the past' and utterly irrelevant to the narrative, until such time as certain embarrassing details may be leaked to damage her reputation. Up until that point, these details were barely mentioned. The way they were written in, though, felt as though they were always 'hidden away in a drawer somewhere' (ahem... so to speak), rather than being a hasty and deliberately salacious late addition.
The 'product placement', where Larsson writes out almost a full spec. for just about every item of technology or furniture in the story remains jarring throughout. Seriously, you could outfit your home just like Salander by walking into Ikea with 'The Girl Who Played with Fire' in your hands. But, the more often I read such details, the more it felt like obsessive compulsive attention to fine details than deliberate product placement... though one friend of mine wondered if the details were added at the point of translation, rather than being in the original text. One for the conspiracy theorists, I feel.
Considering I deliberately avoided these books when they first came out - specifically because of their immediate status as 'sensational international bestsellers', partly due to the untimely death of the author - I was pleasantly surprised by all three books, and only slightly disappointed that Larsson felt the need to split the Zalachenko affair over two books. I found them all deeply involving, with many moments of very believable humour running alongside the horrors, and even the occasional tender, personal moment mixed in with the rampant bonking of several characters. Larsson never dwells on the sex so, while it's quite frequent, it doesn't get to the point where it seems entirely superfluous, or gets in the way of the story.
I read one criticism to the effect that Lisbeth Salander was a walking deus ex machina - 'becoming' whatever was needed to solve a particular plot point, like a human Swiss Army Knife. This is both grossly inaccurate and extremely unfair... I might even be tempted to suggest that the critic who wrote that didn't actually read the books, because they missed the point by a very wide margin. Lisbeth is characterised as being a very compartmentalised person. She's unfriendly and cynical. Many of her talents are not explained, they just are... but then, I've never been able to explain why I'm good at what I do for a job, so that doesn't strike me as unusual. Some of her acquaintances only ever come into the story to provide the solution to a problem, but that's wholly in character for both them and Salander. She has the means at her disposal, but only uses those means when they are required. At all other times, they are shut away, safe from prying eyes.
In all, I'd heartily recommend all three. It's not necessary to read book one before book two but, since books two and three are essentially parts of the same story, they must be read together and in order.
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