Savor-worthy: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Some people read the book first and watch the movie second. I ALWAYS (when possible) read the book after I watch the movie. Some would say this spoils the book, but I disagree; the book is always better than the movie, so I find myself rarely disappointed. Instead, I use the movie-version of a story to whet my appetite and I then seek out the book to fill in the interesting details the movie couldn't include. I also get interesting character insights from the book that the movie was unable to tackle or was too confined to begin to tackle the topic. With this said, I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo after I'd seen the swedish version of the movie (with English subtitles). Apparently, there's supposed to be an English version in the making as well.

I kept hearing about TGDT (my new abbreviation for it) on NPR and from my artsy, indie friends. The story was written by Stieg Larsson, who passed shortly after having the trilogy published. I heard TGDT was fabulous, but then came the disclaimers: do not watch or read this if you're squeemish about sexual violence-- because this theme pushes the entire conflict. As well, when I heard about it on NPR, I was reassured that the sexual violence is necessary to the plot and that the main character gets vindication (which helped me stomach one scene in particular).

The gist is this: Lisbeth Salander is a punk-rock (minus the rock) investigator. She makes her own hours and her own rules. She's also a warden of the state... which the book never explains (but gets explained later in the TGDT aka Millenium Series). We catch up with her at the point when her state guardian dies and she's assigned a new, sexually sadistic state guardian.

Meantime, Mikael Blomkvist is a financial reporter who's recently lost a libel lawsuit and he's baited by the head of the Vanger family to write a chronicle of the family (publically) and attempt to solve a 30 year old disappearance mystery (secretly).

Lisbeth and Mikael become an unlikely pair after Mikael makes enough progress on the mystery to realize that he's in over his head. He enlists Lisbeth because he read the thorough, and unsettling report she wrote for Mr. Vanger in order to assure Vanger of Blomkvist's skill and ethical standard.

The story is both sexual and a bit gory, but it's far from unintelligent. The story has a strong plot that holds up to it's (at times) unnecessary wordiness. At 630+ pages, I couldn't help but want to chew out Larsson's editor for not requiring him to cut out 200 or so pages- particularly unnecessary info about what type of sandwiches the characters ate as well as an diatribe about a Swedish tycoon via an explanation of the Swedish banking industry. However, I slowly wandered through the story because it had intrique: Why was the Harriet Vanger missing? And then, what did these other brutal murders have to do with her- if her body was never found? I couldn't help but be sucked in, but I decided I was also ready for some cheap and easy YA lit. reading immediately after this commitment-of-a-book was concluded.