My first comment on this book is that I can not recommend this book to just any one. There is surprisingly little swearing or graphic sex, for those who might find that offensive or harmful to their conscience. But that being said, the underlying theme of this book is about violence perpetrated against women and violence in general; in fact the original Swedish title of the novel translates to 'Men Who Hate Women' or something like that, and you get a gut-wrenching look into that theme. For some readers, it will be too much, too explicit, too much of the curtain pulled back on something that is a painfully disgusting reality for many women. I think I can say this with out giving way any key to the mystery, but it may be helpful for some of you to know this is a very present theme.
I had to push myself to get through the first hundred or so pages of this novel (that's around 20%), telling myself that it was going to get somewhere. And did it ever. Larsson's style at first seems to be a day-by-day plotting on of his main character's exile, full of annoyingly mundane detail and product placement (in a novel?), but you eventually feel drawn into the Blomkvist's journalistic mind; because of this the reader can see Sweden in brilliant brushstrokes. There is something to be said for an author you can put you in a place you have never been and leave you with the feeling that you can reach out and wipe the industrial soot off the wall in one scene or feel the bone-numbing chill of winter in another.
I was reminded of two different novels as I read 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' - the first was Italo Calvino's 'If On a Winter's Night a Traveler' because I bought that book thinking that I would really enjoy it, only to be so disoriented by it's postmodern bent of storytelling that I closed it about three chapter's in to my reading. Larsson is no postmodernist in this sense, his story is very linear; but every time I stopped reading, I wondered if I wanted to pick the book up again. Some of that had to do with the major and minor themes of the novel, some of that had to do with the many threads the reader has to carry throughout the plot.
The other novel brought to memory was Victor Hugo's 'Les Miserables' because even though it took me three years to do it, I finished that book. It was ultimately sheer will that got me through that book. I stayed up until 4 am to finish the novel, mostly because I wanted to know that it was done. But it can also be said that Larsson's attention to detail, though more restrained than Hugo's, still had a resonance of that older man's layer upon layer of minutia. The reader can trust that Larsson knows what he is talking about. Additionally, the shared theme of restoration and forgiveness is present, if less explicitly.
Larsson also raises some interesting questions about how the victims, the weak, the seemingly broken are treated in his (and perhaps our) society. Blomkvist is faced with a dilemma at one point, and feels he has broken his journalistic duty by not revealing all of the matter. But, he is reminded, there is a human element that requires his protecting the victim. Should he push that person into the light before they are ready, it does them no good to have the truth told, it only does more damage. Pondering this, it makes me wonder what we do in the name of 'Truth' without first looking at our words, our actions, our motivations, and asking how they will impact others. Will they damage or heal? Blomkvist's own motivation seems merely to be that he feels he must tell all of the story because he knows all of the story; but in many ways, it is not his story to tell. This is his dilemma.
There were a couple of places where the translation work was a little distracting, but by the end of the novel that had either been smoothed out or I had gotten used to the style.
My general recommendation is that if you can stomach the intensity, then you might very well enjoy this novel. It is crisply translated and once you are past a certain point, fast paced. The characters are well developed, and their world is deep and richly mined. If, however, you feel you might not be able to encounter elements that are truly disturbing, you might do well to pass it by.
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