23. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson

I Must be one of the very last people to read this book. In spite of the book garnering so much success and worldwide fame, it somehow never captured my eye. I blame it partially on an absurd title which sounds so very cheesy. I just did not feel like picking it up and feel disappointed at the end.
But when I heard that Hollywood is making a movie out of it, I had to read the book, after all I thought, when I survived through “Twilight”, I can survive any nuclear bomb.

In spite of carrying such cynicism forward when I started this book, I was pleasantly surprised page after page. The book is not one of those fast paced action thrillers, but in spite of that it will grab and hold your attention throughout. This story almost spreads into your soul like a infection and lingers there even after a many weeks have gone by after completing it.

Coming to the story itself, It starts with two parallel stories, one is that of Mikael Blomkvist, a charming journalist, who is portrayed as some kind of a magnet to any woman who lies eyes on him. The other is that of Lisbeth Salander who is a very quiet and the biggest introvert you could ever meet. She is portrayed as someone whose mental condition is almost along the lines of Asperger’s Syndrome. But as you often find with people who are suffering from a kind of autism, she possesses a brilliant and an intelligent mind.

She is one of those quirky kind of an individual who prefers to express herself through tattoos which cover almost her entire body and has countless piercings. Well, there’s so much to describe about her, but doing that would almost give away half of the story.

The plot from there continues as to what happens in Blomkvist’s and Salander’s life individually. The extreme lows they go through in their life and how they try getting back up and face these challenges. All this sounds like an emotional roller coaster, and it is anything but that.

The author could have easily slipped up here and added 100 other pages of how they deal with their emotional nightmares, but he brilliantly twists the plot and it becomes much more interesting.

And when these two quiet forces(Blomkvist and Salander)meet in the second half, it just creates magic and together their sheer brilliance brings down some of the biggest evils there is.

Henry Vangner hires Blomkvist to find the killer of his niece who was murdered 40 years ago. Blomkvist with the help of Salander tries to uncover the truth behind this murder which no one could solve in the past 40 years. Even these kind of absurdities are actually overcome by the overall story.

It just goes to show the power of writing that by the end, we emotionally connect and fall in love with the character Lisbeth Salander who throughout the book comes across as one who does not have any emotions and is almost rude and keeps her distance from everyone around.
If you are not blown away after reading this book, well !! must say something wrong with your mental status !!