No. The appeal of the first book isn’t any more about violence against women than the appeal of Silence of the Lambs is about violence against women.
Agreed that there’s no high literary value, but the idea that the appeal of the book is rooted in violence against women is clearly wrong. (The appeal is solving the mystery.)
That’s not my impression at all. When I think of Sweden, I think of mass suicide due to lack of daylight.
I stopped thinking of Sweden that way awhile back, after reading some Sjowall and Waloo (sorry, don’t know how to do the dots), and then Hakan Nesser and lately Johan Theorin. That shit is dark!
I’ve only read the first book, but this sums up both my major gripe and overall opinion.
How many women did the authorial stand-in bed? 4? 5? Including the “manic pixie dreamgirl”?But beyond the eye-rolling over how smart/sexy/awesome Larsson made the male lead (who happened to have the same job and interests as the author - how odd!), it was enjoyable enough.
Great [B]article** by Christopher Hitchens on the author Stieg Larsson
Larsson’s more-or-less widow (live-in girlfriend/companion) claims to have most of a fourth book on Larsson’s laptop, but it’s apparently in negotiation because, Sweden not having common-law marriage, when Larsson died who got what became a pain in the butt. Larsson’s father and brother are apparently wrangling with the girlfriend over who has the rights to what’s on the laptop. At least that’s what Entertainment Weekly was saying last week.
Lisbeth Salander is one of the most original characters created in a long, long while. The scenes that include her make the trilogy well worth your while. (And yes, I have read all three.)
PS And yes, there is a lot of violence, but they are crime thrillers, after all. Oh, and the violence against Lisbeth does get avenged. Big time.
I think Berger is my favourite character of the series. It’s her even more than Lisbeth who makes me baffled at the ‘misogynist’ accusations.
I was fascinated by her navigating the S.M.P offices in Book three, and for a while that sustained me through the third book, which I think is rather dull for the first 200 pages.
The first book I would recommend without reservation - the other two are flawed but still worth reading.
Having worked my way thru 150 pages, I’m starting to agree with this.
The New Yorker has a good (short) parody of the Millenium books (and their author’s writing style):
The Girl Who Fixed the Umlaut, by Nora Ephron.
I know. What I like (and I use “like” sarcastically) is that what little wasn’t revealed about the various third-book characters by the end of the second book is simply presented as a “History of Sweden’s Secret Police” to start the third book.
Then we spend 400 pages reading about characters telling each other what the reader has already known since 2/3rds of the way through the second book. Then when that is done those two characters go and tell someone else. It is all very exciting (again with the sarcasm).
There is something rather typically Swedish about these books, but at the same time, most of the standard tropes gets subverted. There is a long Swedish literary tradition that infuses most of the crime books or thrillers from that country, and being somewhat familiar with earlier works can add to ones enjoyment of Larsson, but is by no means necessary.
The main character in a Swedish crime or thriller is usually a cop, usually divorced, usually with adult children who don’t understand him or her, and he or she may or may not be a budding alcoholic in failing health. A male one is probably a serial monogamist manqué. The prime examples being Beck and Wallander. Blomquist is different. He is divorced but amicably. He doesn’t understand his daughter, but the relationship is good. He is staunchly polyamorous, and seems to make it work with minimal drama. And he is not a cop, or any sort of investigating professional, but he has a reason for investigating the central mystery nevertheless.
Most Swedish crime books have an underlying socialistic tone - the bad guy may be filthy rich through amoral but legal means, characters with money have more rights at their disposal than the poor or average people etc. See Tjuvarnas marknad (English - The Market of Thieves, I don’t know if it has actually been translated) for a blatant example. This is loud and clear in the Larrson books, but also problematised - several rich characters are squarely on the “good” side, most of the main characters are upper middle class rather than barely scraping by, money is at one point gained though moral but illegal means etc.
Lisbeth - she is not in any way typical. She starts out as an adult placed under guardianship, a circumstance so freakishly rare that it makes her interesting in the first place. Secondly, she is the victim of more abuse and trauma than most could imagine. Usually such characters are vulnerable victims, or heroines with hidden reserves of strength. She is neither. She simply is not vulnerable. At all. She operates on her own internal logic, apart from the rest of the book and apart from the rest of the world. She is worth the read alone, in my opinion.
100 pages into book 3 and it looks poised to start getting good. The first 100 pages, tho, were pretty skimmable.
Is this a zombie yet? I hope not.
I’ve just finished the three books. I found all three to be page turners but I’m somewhat confused about allegations of misogyny, pretty much every main female character is a strong competent woman who at some time has to deal with some kind of harassment from a man. She invariable gets revenge in one way or another. To me the trilogy has a very strong feminist theme. I felt that it’s primary weakness was in bludgeoning the reader with the feminist stick. I don’t have a problem with the feminist stick, but it could have been more subtle. I also got a very Kill Bill type vibe from it. Large parts of it were like a revenge story. The end of the second novel stretched my suspense of disbelief a touch and the second and third novels are pretty much one book neatly divided in the middle. If you finish the second one you are as compelled to read the third as if it was just the next chapter.
Overall I really enjoyed it, it was a true page-turner for me.
I also hope this is not a zombie.
I just finished the first two books and will start the third one soon. I enjoyed them very much, in fact I found them hard to put down.
I think I know why these books are such a big success: They are allegories of Good vs. Evil disguised as simple mysteries. All her life Salander, the Good, fights against Evil in the form of, well, everyone else around her except Blomkvist. Unlike most people she is capable of this awesome task. Because of this subtext, it brings out strong emotions in readers – at least it did in me.
My wife had a rough time getting through the first few chapters of The Girl Who Played with Fire and alomst gave up, but then she said it got really good and interesting. So maybe it just takes awhile for the writing to settle down. She said the first chapters were “excessively annoying.”
Both of the first two (haven’t read the third yet) take over a hundred pages just to set the scene. But after that they become very exciting, so much so that they are hard to put down. At least that was my experience.
For what it’s worth as the OP, I’m probably going to give these books a pass. I’m not a particular fan of mysteries. I read them occasionally but I don’t go out of my way to do so. From what I’ve heard here, I think I’ll spent my reading hours elsewhere.
They are more thriller than mystery.