First of all, I watched the 2011 film first. *Audible hisses and bleats coming from the literature snobs out there who believe I should've read the film first.* Well, I never expected to be going to see the film. I went to see it with some friends this past Boxing Day, and found it hard to get through. A) because of all the names of family members, place names and other intricate details that my sieve-brain was desperately trying to remember B) because of the somewhat gruesome depictions of sexual assault, making me squirm somewhat uncomfortably in my seat, and C) because of the lack of effort put into pulling off a Swedish accent from Daniel Craig.
But I found the film entertaining, and the story intriguing- I therefore bought it a day later on my Kindle (sorry Hulse, no hard copy here I'm afraid), and proceeded to read the novel everyone's been talking about.
Let me start by saying that I really enjoyed the book, and I now want to read the other books in Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy. However, for the first few chapters of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, it felt as though I didn't quite belong- as if I had walked into a French jazz café wearing a wife-beater and pounding out Tupac from a ghetto blaster. I waded into this book and found myself immersed in pretentious left-wing European journalism and financial espionage. I know nothing of this kind of thing, so I felt kind of alienated.
It also seemed to take a long time to pick up the pace and get me excited for what would come next. I can't even remember how long it takes Henrik Vanger to reveal protagonist Mikael Blomkvist's mission to him, and there seemed to be so much fluff in all the detail that it was a bit overwhelming.
However, cultural alienation and copious amounts of fluff aside, the book was so well written that I had to keep reading. I was interested in the characters, interested in the premise- and, knowing that the book was quite a bit different to the film, I was interested to see where it would end up. Moreover, while Blomkvist begins to go about his investigation in a meticulous fashion, the titular tattooed femme fatale herself, Lisbeth Salander, had me particularly hooked. You understand quite quickly that she's got more skeletons in her closet than you can shake a stick at, and that it's going to be gripping stuff when they all come tumbling out. Salander's troubled mind becomes very real for the disgusting swine who sexually abuses her, in a gritty act of revenge that will make any man cringe.
Blomkvist and Salander's relationship is brought together better on paper than can ever be accomplished on screen, and it continues to develop as the plot swells into a fittingly nail-biting climax. All the while, Stieg Larsson's attention to detail has brought the story to life in my mind and compelled me to read on right to the end- such a shame, then, that I'd seen it as a film beforehand.
If you enjoy reading novels- crime novels in particular- then I recommend you give this a try. And, take my advice- don't read the film first, because you may just enjoy the book more than I did.
No comments:
Post a Comment