欧宝娱乐

** spoiler alert ** Notes made while reading (scroll down for slightly more coherent review):

//also jumps on bandwagon, despite reservations about translation, because I need something lighter to read while migraines are kicking my ass

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Amazon.co.uk items (Sold by Amazon EU S.a.r.L.):
1 The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest 拢9.49
Shipped via Deutsche Post DHL

AWW YEAH. Yes, I am less than 100 pages into this novel and I already made sure I ordered the last book from the UK. Because after 39 years alas I know myself.

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Me reading the book so far: '....financial intrigue journalism Blomkvist yeah yeah....LISBETH! LISBETH! LOOOOVE....swindling setup elderly family retainer yeah yeah....' Picturing Michael Nyqvist does help. Think I am actually looking forward more to the second book -- the Complete Review in that book and I was like 'DUDE THAT'S LIKE BITCHING THAT THE PONY YOU GOT FOR CHRISTMAS JUST POOPED ON THE LIVING ROOM RUG.' (What bad girl thing? I do not have a

-- Also, based on the Nordic-type people I know, I bet this little excerpt is a good example of the author's humour buried under the clunk-ass translation: 'That morning he had also had an invitation to celebrate Christmas Eve with the Beckmans in Saltsj枚baden [Moi is ignorant of city's location and also cannot spell it:]. He said no, but thank you, certain that there was a limit to Beckman's indulgence and quite sure that he had no ambition to find out what that limit might be.' (Erika Berger/Beckman and Blomkvist have been lovers for twenty years.) [Ah, apparently Saltsj枚baden is a resort on the Baltic Sea. My, it looks fancy. No, I am not defensive about being an Ugly American.*:]


*Yes, I've read that book and know that phrase actually means the opposite of what people think, but sadly the misconception has long since passed into popular use. Pretty good book, tho.

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(Very) slightly more coherent review:

Finished this last night (reading way too fast as usual) and while it's a lot more conventional than I thought it was going in (family saga! isolated island! locked-room mystery!** Nazi past!) I of course loved LISBETH, and am pining for the sequel to freakin' show up in my mailbox already so I can devour it. I should write up a more formal review -- these are basically notes I made as I went along.

I liked it a lot! (duh OBVIOUSLY) Many of the Swedish cultural and historical references totally baffled me -- footnotes would've been nice, or even just an appendix explaining some references. "Reg" the translator apparently hand-drew a very nice map, which Vintage didn't include (WTF) so I had to print it out and stick it into my own copy. The style was weirdly clipped -- not a lot of time spent on description of places or people -- while tiresomely prolix in other places (did we REALLY need all those emails near the end?). I think the book could've been trimmed by 200 pp or so easily, but at the same time I enjoyed reading something more discursive with a lot of setup that wasn't slavishly following the 'HOOK your reader within TWO PARAGRAPHS by their EYEBALLS!!!111' ubiquitous writing "advice" everywhere nowadays. I'd love to read it in the original sometime, sigh. It was mainly a good fast ride, at least on the surface, altho parts of it still oddly stick in my mind:

The book is very much about systemic evil -- the structure of capitalism itself; the historic references to genocide; the way Salander is at the mercy of her guardians, misunderstood and underestimated and abused by courts and clinics and foster families. Sweden, the cliche of the socialist 'nanny state,' is actually dark and dangerous as the fairy-tale forests. Lots of reviewers complained that the framing story of Blomkvist taking on financial corruption was pointless but I think it's included for thematic reasons -- not just to set up the plot of why he would take the detective/researching job, but as an illustration of how things work. This is a novel by an investigative journalist supposedly about how heroic investigative journalism brings down powerful rich criminal organizations which corrupt the system, only he can't do it: Lisbeth is outside the social structures, so she breaks the law and brings the swindler to justice, like an avenging angel. It's the same way she deals with her guardian/abuser, and the murderer. She's the only one who can enact justice because she's outside society and the law, as a rejected, isolated, discarded misfit. She's a self-made Fury.

The murderer himself is set firmly within the patriarchal capitalist system as both the CEO of a huge corporation and scion of a completely fucked-up family -- that he's _also_ taught to be a serial killer by his father in abusing his sister is icing on the psychocake. Can I just say how happy I am not to see yet another genius Bach-happy overly cultured pretentious serial killer? (looking at YOU, Hannibal) altho I think this one was still fairly unrealistic given the actual psychopathology....but what the hell, it's a novel. Even the Nazis are brought in -- not so much for shock value but to point out that there were political parties in Sweden (and other countries, of course) which supported them and their ideas long after WWII, and even oh-so-charming Henrik (who actually got on my nerves) admits he succumbed to the lure of the propaganda. No one is innocent.

Critics say the book is about how awful men are, or how all the men in the book suck except Blomkvist, which isn't true: Henrik clearly loves Harriet and Erika's husband, while offstage, seems like a good man; Blomkvist himself objectifies women somewhat by sleeping around and the bit at the end about how he judges himself as a bad father (paralleling Gottfried as the ultimate bad parent and Henrik as the good foster-father) is really touching. The hacker Plague and Salander's first guardian also obviously care for and help her. It's about the system, and how systematized socialized misogyny warps everyone trapped within it. I liked how the women wind up in charge at the end -- Erika runs the magazine, Harriet is now restored as the rightful CEO, and of course Salander has all that money. Maybe they'll be able to make some changes.

This makes the book sound terribly dry and dull, like a thesis, which of course it isn't. I really liked the absolutely cold, isolated atmosphere Blomkvist is stuck in -- it was described without a lot of fuss but built up very strikingly over pages and pages. I enjoyed the old-fashioned detective work involving the photographs, making a mini-film of Harriet, trying to see what she saw, hunting down the other photographers....(I could practically see that sequence as I was reading it, I bet it'd make a great interlude in the film.) But of course, the main reason I picked the novel up and why I personally think everyone is raving about it is LISBETH, LISBETH, LISBETH. I adored her. She's like the brutal fucked-up 'perfect victim' of the system gone through hell and back to take her revenge as a fallen angel -- and yet she's a real person with too many noserings who never cleans her apartment and binges on pizza. I loved that she was a hacker and had terrible social skills and made people think she was mentally slow and couldn't trust anyone. She's truly vibrant. I loved how flawed she was, too: how she had no sympathy for Martin being abused himself, how she walks away from Blomkvist at the end, the fantastic trap she set for her guardian rather than relying on anybody else. Why would she?

If it hadn't been for her I would never have finished this book (well, I probably wouldn't have picked it up at all, but enough people said 'YOU WILL LOVE HER' and they were right). It's way too long -- so much time is spent on trivial little details it was far too easy to skim; I actually hate family sagas; I didn't find a lot of the other characters compelling (I did love Erika -- and Cecilia -- and Isabella was terribly chilling even tho we didn't see much of her); the resolution of both mysteries actually felt somewhat anti-climactic; I prefer novels with more visual detail -- and so on and on. None of it matters, because there is LISBETH. Of course I also loved the Lisbeth/Mikael show and no doubt if I were in fandom I would 'ship' them and write terrible fanfic about it. I'll settle for devouring the next two books instead.


**Despite Blomkvist snapping at the end "Because this isn't some damned locked-room mystery novel," which cracked me up.