Book Review: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (Millennium #1), by Stieg Larsson

Genre: Mystery Suspense
Date Published: August 2005
Publisher: Knopf
# Of Pages/Listening Time: 465 pages/16 hours 19 minutes

Goodreads | Audible

Synopsis: A spellbinding amalgam of murder mystery, family saga, love story and financial intrigue.
It’s about the disappearance forty years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden . . . and about her octogenarian uncle, determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder.
It’s about Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently at the wrong end of a libel case, hired to get to the bottom of Harriet’s disappearance . . . and about Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-four-year-old pierced and tattooed genius hacker possessed of the hard-earned wisdom of someone twice her age—and a terrifying capacity for ruthlessness to go with it—who assists Blomkvist with the investigation. This unlikely team discovers a vein of nearly unfathomable iniquity running through the Vanger family, astonishing corruption in the highest echelons of Swedish industrialism—and an unexpected connection between themselves.
It’s a contagiously exciting, stunningly intelligent novel about society at its most hidden, and about the intimate lives of a brilliantly realized cast of characters, all of them forced to face the darker aspects of their world and of their own lives.

My Rating:

 ★★★★★

.....For having an awesomely strong female character.

My Thoughts:

I was in the mood for a feminist re-read, and this one hit the spot! It really didn't take long to finish on audiobook (great job Simon Vance, by the way), although it helps when you have a lot of house chores to do, and you're 6 months pregnant and waking up at 3 am every friggin' night!

Anyway...

What's pleasantly surprising is that this novel's main theme is about the monstrosity of violence and abuse against women, and yet this was a novel written by a man. As a feminist I find this aspect of the novel (and the trilogy as a whole) fantastic; we need more men like Stieg Larsson speaking out for gender equality.

You can see the feminist views in the characters. One of the main protagonists, Lisbeth Salander, is a young woman who is described as someone who "looks like a victim". Yet she is so badass! She is intelligent with lots of intiative, and she is perfectly capable of taking care of herself and helping her friends in the most unexpected ways. As it turns out, there's no damsel in distress in this novel, because it's not the guy who gets to, or even needs to, rescue the girl :)

The characters are my favorite part of this novel, but the story is great too. Sure there's a lot of information in the beginning, which is a little confusing at first, but then you get used to it, and you find yourself drawn into the mystery, just like Mikael Blomkvist. It's a great mystery with a good plot twist (I don't know about other people, but I love re-reading a good mystery and keeping tabs on the person who I know to be the villain, just so I can see how everything ties together). The pace of the story is also pretty good; some people might find it a little slow perhaps, but I find it to be nicely steady and thorough.

I find the writing to be pretty well done as well. It's a little dry, but it somehow works perfectly for this book.

Overall, I love this novel. I think it's a great mystery, written by a man who very much a feminist. If you're looking for a novel with a true strong female character, you should definitely try this one. I would also say that the audiobook version is very well done, although you might have to rewind a little bit at certain points so you don't miss any important information. A great read!