The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

 

Author:  Stieg Larsson

Begun: March 12th 2025

Finished: March16th 2025

Type: Audiobook on Libby

Narrator: Simon Vance

Rating: 7/10

Art by Angus MacDonald 

The Uncle of a girl who went missing over forty years ago hires a disgraced journalist, Mikael Blomkvist to track down what happened to her.  Blomkvist is aided by Lisbeth Salander, an anti social on-the-spectrum punk with several tattoos and piercings...who also has a photographic memory and an incredible ability with computers.  Shenanigans ensue. My favourite scene involved a golf club.  It made me very very happy.  

Larsson is *obsessed* with breasts.  Holy guacamole he goes on and on and on about them.  Enough that I started getting really weirded out.  Their sizes were described, they were touched, they were looked at...and at precisely zero of those times was the information relevant to the story.  It creeped me out, frankly,  When authors do that I'm wondering what on earth is going on in their heads.  Clearly women are objects and not people to them. 

And you know what else he's obsessed with?  Minutae.  We get to find out what Blomkvist is doing at each moment of each day in excruciating details.  I really don't need to know the precise time he went to get breakfast from Suzanne's, ok?  It's not really relevant to the story that at 3.10pm he decided to go for a walk, so he got up from his chair, put his cup in the sink, went over to the door, bent down and put on his boots, laced them up, walked out the door and down the path.  

Furthermore, the fact that Blomkvist just waltzes into Salander's apartment and she has no problem with it is just, frankly, unbelievable.  I know Larsson is trying to show that Blomkvist is the MAIN CHARACTER and is SPECIAL but he just didn't convince me.  It was all just plot armour. Bah. 

ALSO, what on EARTH is Salander doing opening the door with just a sheet wrapped around her?  *Nothing* in the story prior to that indicates that that is something she would do in any circumstance whatsoever.  It didn't fit and made no sense.  That whole scene happened because Larsson decided it would happen, not because it was something that the characters would actually do. 

And don't get me started on the details of the rape scene.  It was just too dang much and creeped me out.  I had to fast forward over that bit. 

And speaking of fast forward, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo audiobook was read by Simon Vance, who seems to have a large corner of the audiobook market sewn up for himself.  Ordinarily he's pretty good...but for some inexplicable reason he gave everyone English accents.  Also, sadly for him, Rooney Mara nailed her depiction of Salander SO WELL that hearing Vance's depiction of Lisbeth's voice was just all wrong.  I kept wanting to hear Mara's voice.  It didn't make me turn off the audiobook, but it was just okay for me.  Not nearly as bad as the Heyer audiobooks though, not by a long shot. 

This is one of the very few instances where the film is almost better than the book.  Specifically the Fincher film.  I've seen both of them, but Rooney Mara is so damn good as Lisbeth in the Fincher one. Also the film has Stellan Skarsgård. Be still my beating heart. 

Picture of Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander for no reason whatsoever.