Friday, January 7, 2011

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Stieg Larsson)

Hardcover

Requested and received for Christmas. Why? Because I just HAD to know what I'd been missing. Answer: absolutely nothing. Why is this a bestseller? And how the heck did I get suckered into being one of its buyers?

The characters are avatars , the "mystery" is pedestrian, the trivialities that do nothing to push the plot forward are mind-numbing, the prose is clumsy and full of cliches, and the physical heft of the book is unforgivable once one is aware of the dullness within.

For a while I tried blaming both the translation from Swedish to English and the fact that it was edited after the author's death...but that wore off pretty quickly. This is poorly written, poorly plotted trash. Absolutely one of the worst reads I've ever had.

F