Skip to main content

Book Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first book in the Millennium series. The book is staged against Sweden and it gained prominence for depicting the rather dark and gloomy side of the country that persists within its citizens may be incoherently. According to the author, all within the novel it has been put forward: an ugly state of the human nature of the countrymen with the matters like ill treatment of women by men, sadism, sex trade, and domestic violence, suicide, deplorable and depressing state of people.

Despite the title, the lead character, in many ways, is Mikael Blomkvist. He runs an investigative cum political magazine called Millennium where he often publishes the scandals and enjoys tarnishing the public image of heavy figures. But this time, the tables have turned on him, he has been charged with a written defamation case against a billionaire industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström. Blomkvist not only pays the hefty amount as a fine but also serves in the prison for three months.

Next, another ageing billionaire industrialist Henrik Vanger hires Blomkvist to get the details of a long lost case that happened around forty years ago. Before the meet-up, Henrik pulls up all details of Blomkvist, this surprises him. The case dates back to around forty years when Henrik’s great-niece, Harriet, goes missing from their private island. Henrik wants to know what all happened to her, if she was murdered then who was that? Henrik has a hunch that someone from his family has done away with her. Henrik promises him a reward of 2.4 million kronor if he succeeded in solving the case.

To get on the case like a tiger, Blomkvist teams up with Lisbeth Salander, a 24-year-old lady with very unusual and complex nature. She has a photographic memory and computer hacking is just another game for her. Inside or outside the plot, this strict yet docile lady always lingers with readers and they are likely to take her with them forever. As the title suggests that the book is about a girl but that girl is not Harriet but Lisbeth herself. As the investigation advances inch by inch, the pace and plot of the book becomes tight and gripping. Well, readers will have bit tough time in sorting out the Vanger family tree to understand the plot and mini climaxes, as there seem many cousins and nephews.

As they both delve deeper to bring out the Harriet’s disappearance, they already formed into intimacy, realize that they aren’t on any cold case. The book is a translated version but still it became a bestseller, also it was published posthumously, and the character Blomkvist has resemblance of what the author himself used to do in his journalistic career. A racy novel and at times the scenes of debauchery, intimacy and gore make it a compelling read.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Poem Summary: Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Poem by Rabindranath Tagore: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. Short Summary: This poem is written by Rabindranath Tagore during pre-independence days, when India was a colony of the British. The underlying theme of the poem is absolute freedom; the poet wants the citizens of his country to be living in a free state. According to the poem, we see that the poet is expressing his views there should be a country, like where people live without any sort of fear and with pure dignity…they should
67 comments
Read more

Book Review: The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond

Among all Ruskin Bond books, The Blue Umbrella has, so far, gathered immense applaud from readers and critics alike.  This is a short novel, but the kind of moral lessons it teaches to us are simply overwhelming. This is a story of Binya, a poor little girl living with her mother and an elder brother, Bijju, in a small hilly village of Garhwal. One day while herding her two cows back home, she stumbles upon some city people enjoying the picnic in the valley. She is enthralled to see them well-groomed and rich. She craves to be one like them and among many other things of their, a blue frilly umbrella catches her attention. She begins craving for it. On the other hand, the city people get attracted by her innocent beauty and the pendant in her neck. The pendant consists of leopard’s claw – which is considered a mascot widely in the hills. Binya trades her pendant off with the blue umbrella. The blue umbrella is so much beautiful that soon it becomes a topic of conversation fo
63 comments
Read more

Poem Summary: Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias is a short poem of fourteen lines written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The concurrent theme of the poem is that nothing remains intact and same forever in this world. Even the brightest of metal, one day decays with passage of time. The throne name of Egyptian King Ramesses is Ozymandias. It was his dearest desire to preserve himself forever by building a huge statue that he thought would never tumble down. Stanza 1: I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; Summary: The poet narrates the poem through the eyes of a traveler who seems to have come back from a remote and far-away land, referring to Egypt. The traveler r
23 comments
Read more