I finished the first book in Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s thriller series, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, during my family’s annual beach week. I won’t be reading any more.
And it’s not that he doesn’t write a well-constructed, well-plotted thriller. I was even drawn to his odd main character, Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the tattoo. She wasn’t always believable, but she was intriguing and kept me wanting to know about her history.
But I’m sick and tired of books that depend on cruelty and depravity to women for their plots. This book was no exception, and it gravely disappointed me. Too much of what I see on TV and in the movies and in some books depends way too much on depicting women being raped, murdered, dismembered, humiliated, and tortured. And the people who produce these shows, movies, and books believe that we, their viewers and readers, find it entertaining, possibly titillating. More disturbing is that too many of us do, based on the reviews of Mr. Larsson’s books and the ratings for those TV shows and movies.
Really?
I don’t happen to think a good thriller needs to have psychopathic men killing and otherwise hurting women to succeed. And I’m not going to buy or watch anything that uses cruelty to women as its central plot element. What really gets me is that much of what incorporates this cruelty is written/created by people who also claim that they are giving us strong women characters. Yeah, strong women characters like Lisbeth Salander who is sexually humiliated by her legal guardian and turns to graphic sexual violence to retaliate. I don’t think I’ll be holding her up as a role model to my nieces.
Now that I’ve read his first book, I can’t believe how much critical acclaim Mr. Larsson’s books have received. Hoping it would be different, I read the first few pages of his second book only to find it started out with a thirteen-year-old girl locked into some contraption and held prisoner by a man.
Keep it. I’ll go back to Henning Mankell if I want to read Swedish mysteries.
The paradox of insular language
2 years ago
I write dark, sociological, YA fantasy, so when people told me the storyline of the dragon books was generational, intricate, and brutal, I was interested. There is certainly action and intrigue, but I could only pity the character--and question the coincidental universe that, over and over, threw her into the clutches of such crazy men--until she became what they were and finally outdid them.
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