Being quarantined at home for over a week saw me reading a lot! Which is good, only I wish the reading material I coincidentally collected just before I fell ill, had been slightly better!
Well, they were written by some of the bestselling authors of our time and I did not in the least expect it to turn out even slightly appalling. To give them due credit, I must say that of the three books I read, One falls into the category of a Good read, another a wonderfully young and bright time pass and the third falls into the genre of a PAIN! And yes I am going to talk about the Pain!
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson
The Book is supposedly a BESTSELLER! I heard about the book almost two/three years back and since then I had mentally decided to have the complete trilogy with me (NOT any more). But as all things will take place only when the Almighty waves his hand, this too only took place two weeks back! And I thought I had the perfect ammunition in hand to combat my illness, but alas I was grossly mistaken!
The Book can be best described as "A forensic FIR with sickenly high degree of explicit violence". It is certainly the last thing one would want to read while having severe cold, cough and fever, as this is the time when our minds are already playing up unpleasant thoughts and poignant themes over and over again!
I feel the Book should have retained the original title of “Men Who Hate Women”, because that is exactly what it is! It is a Book by a Man who obviously hated women and the female body! Lisbeth Salander (the tattooed private investigator/hacker of the title) is portrayed as a feminist avenging angel. At the same time Larsson goes into the most graphic descriptions of the abuse and mutilation of women, often going into the whole "misogynist" zone altogether!
It's all very confusing if you come to the story a bit after the event, which, like many, I have. Not being a thriller fan, I spurned the Dragon Tattoo bandwagon for a long time. When a book is as hyped as this, you have certain preconceived notions: I imagined violence, but apparently NOT enough! I was shocked, to discover how formulaic and disturbingly graphic it was. Yes the book is nothing like what I have read in the fact, but THIS was a revelation! At the beginning of the book, I paused for like 10 minutes, thinking about the poor Larsson who couldn’t live to see the immense success of this books and gradual transfer to the Silver screen!
The underlying message that I found from this book was that, we behave the way we do because of our individual characters, upbringings and personal histories. In Larsson's world, it's the psychopaths who split the world thanks to their Idiocrasies about Genders.
The Book is laced with high level of distress at misogyny with Larsson’s explicit descriptions of sexual violence, his breast-obsessed heroine and babe-magnet hero. No one seems to have any morals whatsoever! Which I now believe is too much to ask for from a Thriller Novel! Larsson's is greatly preoccupied by violence against women, and the scarcely believable horrors that are unearthed, which are all deeply rooted in misogyny.
I will would to label the Book as anti-women. It was a potentially good mystery is lost in scenes – such as a violent rape – that dwell too much on what feels to me like Larsson's horrible fantasies. He spares us many graphic descriptions, leaving a lot of the worst to our imagination which is even worse.
I am a huge fan of Dan Brown's writing style. Brown's book gives us a great deal to think about. Reading it again and again I always discovered something new which I have never noticed before. The way Brown has woven such a beautiful work, with all the pieces falling in place at the right time, the suspense, the anagrams, the puzzles, and the greatest mystery which is unleashed at the end... It was simply amazing with all the connections that he came up with be it Princess Ariel or the others. I remember reading Angels and Demons, The Da Vinci Code, If tomorrow comes (by Sidney Sheldon) and secretly wishing if I could get into the writer’s head! After reading this book that wish of mine has been completely nipped in the Bud!
I waited too long to read the book and look at the Result! I think I'll give the film a miss altogether!!
2 comments:
I'm surprised that u thought it was very misogynistic. Personally i thought it was refreshing how strong the character of lisbeth is. And personally i think the violence was an integral part of the story. Too often writers are afriad to put their main characters through too harrowing a time. It's pretty poignant that the main female character in this story gets raped but still doesnt lose her spirit or any of her heroism in the eyes of the writer or the reader.
Maybe its just me, I just cannot take violence at such extreme levels! :)
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