After a looooong hiatus, I am back to reading! And would you believe it’s with something I’ve been wanting to read since August! This book has been with me for a really long time now, since I bought the three books from Bookchor last year…! And out of the three books I bought, I’ve managed to read only two. There just seemed so many other books to read before then 😛
I tried reading, or rather starting to read, this book for a month. But I just never was able to concentrate. I could barely make it through the prologue that I had to stop for something or the other. Before I knew, two months had passed and I had kept the book back on the shelf.
But there are some books that are not meant for light reading. This is one of them. Once I actually started reading the book with no other distractions, I just couldn’t put the book down! And within a week, I had finished reading it. That is what is needed sometimes… the mood is important some days. And if you need a break from something, there’s no point forcing yourself. It’s sometimes better to give yourself a change.
The first thing about the book I would like to say is that don’t get bogged down by the hundreds of characters in the story. Most of them are forgettable and don’t really matter to the story much. One more thing to know is that the story and the narrative aren’t for people who are sensitive about violence. It might be too disturbing for some people and they should stay away from this book.
I had not seen the movie or even seen the trailer of the movie before reading this book. I did not even know who was playing the characters in the movie to form a picture in my head about the characters. It’s a good thing though because the Mikael Blomkvist in my head looked much different from Daniel Craig. 😄 Lisbeth looks pretty close though.
Here’s the trailer if you want to see it.
Anyway, back to the story… The story is about Mikael Blomkvist hired by Henrik Vanger to find out what happened to his niece Harriet Vanger. It’s been about 40 years since her disappearance and Henrik is convinced that she was murdered. Henrik has spent all his time on the mystery but hasn’t been able to find out anything. Mikael is sure he won’t find anything after such a long time, but he gives it a shot anyway because he has nowhere else to be. Somehow he manages to finds himself closer to the truth and as a result the target of someone trying to hide the truth. His partner in this mystery-solving is Lisbeth Salander, a hacker/detective who can find out just about anything she wants.
As I mentioned before, the story is not for the light-hearted. While I never went into the book thinking it would be all happy and colorful, it was still much more than what I had imagined. But the worst part for me was knowing that this could all be very much true. In fact, many of the things described in the book are things that you might have read about at some point in your life (unless you’ve had a very sheltered life). The realism of the events is what makes the story more disturbing. It’s not just pure imagination.
The characters seemed quite interesting within the story, but now that I think about them, I can’t recall any individualistic traits that set most of the characters apart. The only one that definitely stands out is Lisbeth Salander, and for obvious reasons. She certainly had a difficult childhood that shaped her adult life. I read that she is supposed to have a mental illness, but I am not qualified enough to say anything about the subject. The only thing they explicitly mentioned was her photographic memory.
Coming to the writing style, the book is a translation from Swedish. So I didn’t expect it to be very relatable. The setup and the living style are certainly not. But it did not hamper the story at all. The setup also helped create a mood around the story. I can’t say if the translation lost anything important from the original, but I didn’t feel anything amiss. I’m glad I decided to give it a try last week.
My rating: ★★★☆☆
Book Reviews and Opinions 