28th January 2010
Helped by Neil describing it as the best book he had read since the book club started and Ras giving it nearly twice his average mark, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has rocketed in with an astounding 8.14. (later revised down after all scores came in).
General approval then, in particular for the way in which Steig spun a tale. Clear agreement that he really hooked us in to the story and it was a book that we (almost all) looked forward to getting back to and resented having to put down. The possible exception was Steve, whose main gripes were that the quality of writing was not great - something that several others shared to varying degrees, and that the hype around the Larsson story had elevated a rather tedious whodunnit to far higher status than it really deserved. This led to a re-run of the discussion about how we rate books - yes it wasn't great literature in the sense of literary writing style, but how much does this matter if it was enjoyable in other ways... and then of course there is the issue of it being a not very good translation (Steve) - something that has been acknowledged by Larsson's wife...
Other issues that cropped up and/or were commented upon:
Linked to the quality of writing, some opinions (not agreed by all) that whilst telling a good story it didn't really paint a picture of the place and the action (lacking aesthetic value was my comment). Those who had been to Scandinavia disagreed.
On a similar theme, there were a number of incidents or important pieces of information that were unbelievable. Did this matter? Was this supposed to be a highly realistic book (in which case it probably did) or more a flight of fancy (in which case it probably didn't).
Differing views on the end - an almost equal divide between those who thought he tied up all ends nicely and didn;t rush the ending and those who thought he dragged it out unnecessarily
We generally liked the characters - in particular the two main ones (plus the old man) - which helped draw us into the story
Some frustration at important questions not being answered (e.g. what was the importance of Salander's mother in this), but we were told by Neil who has read the second in the series that this is because they form part of the subsequent novels
On the positive side of the writing style, he very cleverly interlinked the different story lines within chapters in a way that worked by keeping the momentum going without confusing the reader
Clever people noted that he gave away the answer to whether Harriet was dead or not right at the start.
Beyond the specifics of the book, we then moved into a discussion about whether this was a literary phenomenon or a publishing phenomenon - general view is that it was the latter - and of course the film is just waiting to be produced (twice). The story behind the book of the lawsuits and argument between Steig's common law wife and his blood family about the resultant money and the apparent failure of Swedish law to recognise the rights of non-married partners was of some surprise to us given the image of Sweden as a socially enlightened country.
7.63
