The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I am a big believer in "reading the book before seeing the movie," which is why when I saw the trailer for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I knew that this book would become a must on my books to read list. Stieg Larsson's posthumous best-sellers follows an unlikely team on their quest to catch a culprit involved in a forty year old unsolved missing persons case. Mikael Blomkvist, an acclaimed journalist, has just committed his greatest career blunder. After publishing a story with falsified claims, he is committed of libel and forced to serve three months in prison. With the realization that his continued occupancy and involvement with Millennium, a magazine in which he holds the title of both co-founder and publisher, would damage the magazine rather than aid it, he quietly slips away from the media scene in order to take a much needed hiatus. No sooner does Blomkvist resign than he is approached by the legal-adviser to Henrik Vanger, a business tycoon and the uncle of a sixteen-year-old girl who disappeared nearly forty years earlier. Vanger, now in his eighties, contacts Blomkvist with the hope that Mikael will be able to determine what happened to his beloved niece and put his mind to rest once and for all. Simultaneously, the reader is introduced to Lisbeth Salander, a tattooed and pierced surveillance agent mastermind, who works for Milton security. Salander is far different from most twenty-four year old women, not only in appearance but also in behavior, as she is considered asocial and has thus been pronounced legally incompetent. As the novel progresses it becomes evident that Salander has trust issues, for she is often unwilling to partake in a lasting relationship. When Blomkvist decides that he needs a research assistant, Salander is brought on to the investigation. The result is momentous, as the atypical team discovers a sixty year-old secret that has been buried under a long line of family denial.

The first three hundred pages (out of nearly six hundred) are relatively devoid of action. The beginning half of the book, while interesting, basically just serves to provide background information, and establish the base of the novel. The first half of the book describes Blomkvist career blunder, and the character's lives pre-investigation in vivid detail. While I enjoyed this section, I did not feel that it was extremely compelling or of great importance to the story as a whole. Once Blomkvist began to obtain evidence and Salander was brought on, however, the story began racing toward a climax. In a matter of pages the novel went from acting as a simple informational read, to an intense page-turner. I found myself consumed by the character's actions, and felt as though I too had become a part of this murder mystery thriller.

Although The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has climbed near the top of my favorite books list, there were a few criticisms I would offer the novel. The main element I found that irked me about the book was the financial and political references. Blomkvist works at a magazine that deals with mostly financial and political stories. His entire career blunder is centered around a corrupt industrialist billionaire, Wennerström. Blomkvist and his attempts to expose Wennerström's crimes, become a sub-plot within the actual story, however, I found that I did not quite understand this sub-plot, simply because I do not speak financial terms and lingo. I thought that the story would have been more entertaining and interesting had this sub-plot either been down-played, or removed altogether. In addition to this, I found that many of the breakthroughs Blomkvist and Salander discovered in the case were chance findings. All of the clues and leads they discovered seemed like they were something no short of miraculous, which made the book feel slightly unrealistic at times.

The main reason I fell in love with this book was simply because of the story. The plot had a perfect blend of mystery, romance, dimension, and family drama. Within the novel there was also an underlying theme centered around men abusing women. The book both highlighted and brought awareness to this dilemma. Subsequently, there was a statistic at the beginning of each section, which illustrated different numbers of women abused and assaulted in Sweden. I found that these statistics made the violence by a man's hand feel real, rather than just a scene out of a story. Salander, who was abused a few times, eventually got her revenge, which was an interesting take and way to further illustrate this theme. It was empowering and I personally thought that the book sent a pro-women message.

I think that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was one of the best books written in the past decade. I will give warning now, however, as certain parts of the novel were graphically intense. There were a handful of sexual assault/abuse scenes, which is why I would recommend the novel to a mature or adult audience. Although the writing itself was nothing spectacular, the story and plot development was breathtaking as the novel truly became the definition of a page-turner.

The Virgin Suicides

Jeffrey Eugenides' debut novel, The Virgin Suicides, tells the riveting story of five sisters living in a small Michigan suburb during the mid-1970's. Told through the eyes of an obsessive group of neighborhood boys, The Virgin Suicides follows the story of five sisters who individually end their own lives over the course of a single year. The novel opens with Cecilia, the youngest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon, who is discovered half-alive in the bloody waters of the family's bathtub. Cecilia's attempted suicide, as well as the entire Lisbon household, quickly becomes the talk of this small town as the gossip behind her depression begins to spread from one person to another. Less than a month after Cecilia's melancholy "accident," the five sisters throw a chaperoned party, to which the infatuated boys are invited. They are shyly smitten by the girls' brooding beauty, and intense mystique until Cecilia throws herself from the top of the house and is transpiereced by a fence pole, successful in her second suicidal endeavor. With the death of their youngest sister, the remaining Lisbon girls are ostracized at school and drawn even closer together. Their aloof attitude intrigues the boys, and they watch the four sisters with more intensity than ever. In the fall, Lux Lisbon begins a relationship with the school's heartthrob and bad boy, Trip Fontaine. Trip and his buddies take Lux, Bonnie, Mary, and Therese to homecoming, however, when Lux is caught after curfew with the Trip, the Lisbon sisters are promptly pulled out of school and locked away in their house. The boys are tugged away from the mysterious family and become more distant than ever from the Lisbon girls. They feel their memories of the sisters begin to slip away with the fading seasons, for the girls are rarely seen outside the house. In the spring, the sisters begin to contact the boys through pictures, lights, and notes. They abruptly make plans to meet the girls at midnight and help them escape from their overbearing parents. On the night of the rendezvous, the boys arrive at the Lisbon's dilapidated house in the dead of night, only to discover that they have been tricked, for the remaining four sisters ended their lives while they awaited their arrival downstairs.

The narrative point of view is one of the most intriguing elements of Eugenides' work. As the novel progresses it becomes evident that the neighborhood boys obsessively watch the Lisbon girls. The boys are captivated by the sisters' detached beauty and charisma. They watch the sisters from across the street, drive by their home at night, tell stories, and gather personal items belonging to the Lisbon girls. The despondent tale of tragedy and misfortune is told nearly two decades after the suicides have taken place when the boys, who are now middle aged men, conduct interviews in an attempt to once again piece together the forlorn story of five sisters. Although there is a single unnamed narrator who speaks on behalf of the group, the novel is written through "we's" and "us's" rather than "I's" and "my's". I thought this was an interesting take on narrative point of view for a variety of reasons. Before reading The Virgin Suicides, I had never read a novel from the first person plural yet found it to be an acceptable point of view to tell this particular story from. Had the novel been told from the third-person omniscient it would have ultimately taken away from the mystery and uncertainty surrounding the death of the Lisbon sisters. I also enjoyed the fact that the story was told nearly twenty years after the suicides had occurred. It created a sense of unreliability amongst the characters, as I myself could never fully trust what they were saying. When Trip Fontaine told the story about his night with Lux, or Peter Sissen described the interior of the Lisbon house, I could never completely trust that they were not over exaggerating, or that they remembered the details with exact precision.

Although the novel included vivid descriptions and back stories of the characters, sometimes these recounts seemed superfluous and unnecessary. I found that while reading the excess "fluff" I began to lose interest in the story and was more likely to forget the events and motion of the novel. Although I thoroughly enjoyed the book as a whole, the novel certainly had dry moments that kept it from becoming a page-turner. Another element that prevented The Virgin Suicides from becoming a page-turner was the fact that the boys directly stated at the beginning of the novel that all five sisters would die. Although there was a slight mystery surrounding the idea of a "suicide pact," because I already knew what the culmination would entail I felt that there was no ulterior motive guiding the action of the story.

I would definitely recommend this book to an older teen/adult audience, for it was an interesting yet multi-faceted complex read. Although intriguing, a reader would definitely require some patience and an open-minded thought complex in order to fully grasp the events and meaning behind the novel. I found The Virgin Suicides to be an exceptionally well-written and unique story, and am looking forward to reading more of Eugenides' more recent works.