I have been making mental notes to pick up the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, because everybody was either reading this book or one of the others (the Girl who Played with Fire, the Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest) --together making up the crime trilogy by the late Swedish novelist Stieg Larsson. The trilogy received tremendous publicity and fanfare in major bookstores and the media and drew rapt attention on Swedish crime writers in general. So finally I picked it up last weekend.
Reading the Dragon Tattoo meant, first and foremost, overcoming a learning curve, because I knew almost next to nothing about Sweden, where the story takes place. Incidentally, about a month ago, I had dinner at a Scandinavian place for the first time (the food, by the way, was absolutely superb, right up my sleeves), and the place also had a gift shop selling Scandinavian souvenirs and next to the entrance on a wooden rack were complimentary tourguide books on Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Holland, and we took one of each. The guidebook on Sweden really came in handy.
I had a hard time with the names of people and places mentioned in Dragon Tattoo, and since at the center of the story is a very extended family, and the author enjoys writing about the layout of Stockholm, there are lots of names. So I had to do some nutshell reading on Gamla Stan (which by the way, sounds fascinating!!), the tunnelbana, the archipelago, Södermalm and all the other names I still can't remember. So in this respect, reading Dragon Tattoo feels refreshing, it is something very new to me, informative and educational. But as I read on, about half way through the book, there came a curious sense of deja vu. Inexplicably, I sensed a Japanese presence in the way Stieg Larsson tells the story (or maybe there is a Swedish touch to many Japanese mystery books, I simply don't know).
Aside from the social/political issues and other digressions discussed in the book, Dragon Tattoo is, at the center, a mystery novel. The initial setting of this mystery uses one of the oldest tricks (and probably the favorite trick of many novelists) in the book -- the "locked-room" technique（密室殺人）, the room, of course, is unconventional in the sense that it is an isolated island. An established and powerful family is involved. The family keeps a respectable public facade, but is in fact, rotten to the core with members who can be summed up as inept heir, incompetent drunkard, loose and lewd socialite, and stark raving mad Nazis, among others -- in short, almost a funny-farm. It takes the author a while to traverse the history of this family and generate a panoramic view -- but as soon as the big picture became clear, the setting immediately reminded me of some of the better known mystery stories by Yokomizo Masashi (橫溝正史), such as Inugamike no Ichizoku (犬神家族) and Yatsuhaka Mura (八墓村), and other stories by the more recent Japanese mystery novelist Ayatsuji Yukito (綾辻行人). I have been a huge fan of Yokomizo Masashi and I enjoyed reading "Murders at XX Mansion" books (XX館の殺人) by Ayatsuji Yukito, so I was very pleasantly surprised that Stieg Larsson's style somehow reminds me of these authors: an almost uncanny crime committed in a remote place, an extended family of high social standing, dark secrets that go way back -- the ingredients are all there.
I also love the way Stieg Larsson writes about the everyday things, especially through the protagonist Mikael Blomkvist as he becomes settled down on the island--the "scene of crime": the mundane chores, the daily routines, the simple but hearty lamb with potato meals, the stray cat Tjorventhe, the windfall lovemaking with a neighbor...etc. There is something chilling yet comforting about this kind of writing, something I can relate to from writings by Murakami Haruki -- one of the things I like the most about Murakami's novels is the way he writes about the everyday things and almost out of the blue, takes unexpected turns into "twilight zones" and all things go bananas. Somehow, I'm getting that same vibe in Dragon Tattoo. The female Protagonist, Lisbeth Salander (I have to resist calling her Salamander) has yet to join path with Mikael Blomkvist. Her role in the mystery is still obscure but will soon be revealed.
Mikael Blomkvist is played by Daniel Craig in the 2011 film adaptation of this book.
No comments:
Post a Comment