The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo

I get the chance to read only about one or two fiction books a year, (mostly because I have so little time to read that I usually find myself wanting to invest that time in books that are edifying and not fluff.) Since I don't read fiction very often, I unfortunately don't know many good fiction authors. I recently decided I wanted a good book to read and decided to go with a New York Times bestseller, since I figured hundreds of thousands of readers couldn't be all that wrong.

The book was originally written in Swedish and takes place in Sweden, so the setting itself is rather unusual. The plot itself looked interesting: a writer who was sued for libel and lost is being paid to write the family biography of a wealthy family whose members live alone on a remote island in the frigid north. (Side note: I can only imagine how cold the northern part of Sweden is, since I always imagined the southern part of Sweden wouldn't be exactly balmy.) It turns out that years ago, a girl from this clan went mysteriously missing, and the protagonist's assignment is to find out what happened to her.

I was quite enjoying the book at the beginning. It's a well-written suspense novel that keeps you turning the pages. When I was about a hundred or so pages into it, I asked my mother-in-law (who is a voracious reader) if she had read the novel. She said she had, so I asked her what her opinion of the book was, since I picked it out without knowing much about it. She indicated ambivalence about the book. "Put it this way," she said. "It didn't exactly add anything to my life." In other words, it was a good novel, but not very edifying.

With that review of the book ringing in my ears, I plunged on. As I got deeper into the book, the subject matter grew darker and more disturbing. The most irritating part of the story is that the protagonist is a womanizer, and goes to bed with at least three different women in the book (often times sleeping with these women on successive nights). These women range in age from 25 to 55. I found this part of the story extremely irritating because it seemed to play very little part in the main plot of the book, and only served to make me grossed out and angry. That all being said, I plowed through the rest of the book.

At the end of the day, I am very much in agreement with my mother-in-law. It's a good thriller, if you can overlook all the unnecessary trash. I can't say that it was edifying, but it was mildly entertaining at the least.