The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

It seems that this post gets hits for people searching for the meaning of "a syphilitic polecat."

To break down the phrase, syphilitic is the adjective form of syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease. In the later stages of this disease, symptoms include difficulty moving, paralysis, numbness, blindness, and dementia (mental disorder). I think this is the stage Larsson is referring to because the earlier stages of syphilis are quite mild.

A polecat is a weasel-like animal that kind of looks like a ferret.

So putting the phrase together in the context of "Martin was dafter than a syphilitic polecat - where do I get these metaphors from?" the phrase pretty much means that Martin was crazier than a very diseased weasel-like animal.)

Now, on to the book review!

*Warning: may contain spoilers

My first reaction to this book was one of mild interest. I found the introductory section to be long but interesting enough to keep me reading. One of the ways I judge books is by how easy it is to put down and how much time I spend thinking about the book analytically, both when I'm reading it and when I've put the book down.

Overall the book is a decent read. Because I'm not really used to reading "Scandinavian crime fiction" (as is stated on the front cover), I know I missed out on a lot of the subtle cultural references that I think a lot of other Europeans (or anyone who knows anything about Scandinavia/particularly Sweden) wouldn't have missed. I think that this was probably a contributing factor my mediocre response to the novel.

I think that when talking about durability in terms of rereading this book - because it is a murder mystery (more or less), once the murderer (or murderers) is discovered, the book no longer is really all that compelling to read. At least for me. However, this book definitely has elements that makes the reader want to reread the novel. I was so intent on trying to pinpoint the murderer or the culprit that I didn't really catch any of the larger overarching themes in the book while reading it. In retrospect, I think the most apparent one is awareness of the widespread physical, sexual, and other types of abuse of women worldwide. It definitely makes a statement about how women need to give voice to their rights as well as give a warning to rapists, molesters and murderers alike. The other theme is probably one of child abuse or at least of the aftermath of a troubled childhood. This one I thought was interesting because the book goes through multiple cases of unfortunate childhoods and the different ways that the individuals involved dealt with their situations.

I really liked Salander - her character was so compelling and enigmatic that I wanted to just keep reading about her. Even after finding out about her background, I still thought that she made for a fascinating character. And, in a moment of lame nerdiness, I thought that her photographic memory was so completely cool! Though honestly, some of the pieces of the puzzle (like the way she filled in certain gaps about sadists through her interaction with the new guidance counselor guy and the fact that she even had a photographic memory) seemed somewhat contrived. However, I think that Larsson did a really good job of fitting everything in pretty seamlessly and there was really only one point where I felt there was any kind of character discrepancy in the whole novel. It was really only one line but I felt like it was so uncharacteristic that I actually stopped reading and had to read over the line again to make sure I read it correctly:

"Martin was dafter than a syphilitic polecat - where do I get these metaphors from?" I feel like Larsson really liked that phrase and put it in and then to kind of make up for that discrepancy, added "where do I get these metaphors from?" Perhaps it's some kind of joke that I'm missing. At any rate, that was probably the oddest little bit in the book, especially because Blomkvist never mentions any of those metaphors in any other dialogue. Other than that, I felt like all the characters were believable and three-dimensional and the plot flowed very well.

To point out one of the motifs that I picked up, I thought the whole idea of drinking coffee was interesting. I'm not sure it really meant anything at all except for the fact that when the characters were drinking coffee, they were usually making some kind of progress towards something (usually the Harriet case).

The last thing I wanted to mention for this novel was its readability. I honestly felt like some of the details in the novel could've been left out. This could be because I'm used to more straightforward and concise literature, but all the details about what Salander and Blomkvist ate seemed to have no bearing at all to the plot. This could be because I'm also missing some of the cultural references as well. I also felt like some of the more descriptive parts of the novel were overly detailed but again, probably due to the fact that those descriptions really meant nothing to me (describing a random city in Sweden or the reference to the main highway in Sweden have no bearing on me whatsoever).

In the end this novel succeeded in making me want to visit Sweden, which I shall hopefully do some day. As for recommending the book to others, I think I'd recommend it to most readers. It's a best-seller and it has interesting enough components to engage most readers. I think it'd be a fun book to talk about with others too because the characters are so three-dimensional.