A Life Spent Reading

This is the first Scandinavian novel I’ve read since Smila’s Sense of Snow (which was superb) a decade or two back, and I have to say that I should probably read more. Stieg Larsson has concocted a slow-starting but ultimately very satisfying novel.

There are some oddities here for a reader who has been raised on get-to-it-do-it-and-tie-it-up American offerings. For one thing, it takes a hundred pages or so to set everything up. For another, the main mystery is resolved a good 150 pages before the end of the book…and yet the plot has enough threads and steam left in it to carry you the rest of the way without any problem at all. Stylistically there isn’t really anything to say one way or another – Larsson (in translation, at least) tells his story with a minimum of theatrics, but there is enough detail provided to keep things engaging.

One particular aspect stood out: I very much liked the way that Salander was more than able to physically hold her own against the men in the book. Too often writers try to make their female characters tough and it just seems implausible, if not downright silly. But Salander’s scrapes against men (and there are a few; the original Swedish title was Men Who Hate Women) come across as very believable. I can think of several movie directors who could learn something here.

As with any book that was written in a language other than English, the quality of translation is a question. In this case, Reg Keeland has done a good job, although there are some interesting (well, if you’re into linguistics) usages here and there. The English is really neither British nor American, but a sort of far-north amalgam that had me smiling at times. But the meaning is always clear and the peculiarities never really get in the way; rather they lend a little bit of extra exoticness to the book, and I count them as a plus.

Summary: Not for the GiveItToMeNow crowd, but for anyone else The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is definitely recommended. I’ll be reading the sequels.