The girl with a dragon tattoo

Stieg Larson

So far, my thickiest challenge: 644 pages for the paperback version. It was supposed to be my reading challenge for this summer, but I quickly got enthralled by the plot and specially by the characters, and I couldn't stop reading it. 

The author unveils the plot in such an ingenious way that he keeps the attention of the reader at any moment. There is no room for any lack of interest, not surely during the presentation of the strong characteres, or the first steps of the plot, the easy part, not even at the end of the book, where I have found so many dissapointing finals. To end an intrigue book is not an easy task, many writers are able to build thrilling plots dressed with interesting characteres that become best-sellers, but totally fail to gather together all the different threads of the plot in an end worthy of being remembered. This is not the case, there are neither loose ends, nor unsolved puzzles: e.g. the framed flowers, the strange absence of defence of Blomkvist during the trial, the fate of the archivillain Hans-Erik Wennerström, and the like. 

One of the most praised strong points of Larson's novel is his abbility to recreate a crime novel not in the slums of NY, Chicago or LA, but in the land of the champion leaders on gender equality, democracy, working rights and welfare. The bright Sweden looks a little bit darker after reading this story plenty of corrupt bankers, swindling brokers and women abusers as in any other country.

But in my view, the big invention of the author has nothing to do with the plot or the location, but with his heroine, Lisbeth Salander. What is it that makes a character unforgettable? Its good actions, its charm, its leading personality? Whatever it might be it doesn't work with Lisbeth. Lisbeth seems to have been created following to the letter one of House's core ideas: Normal is overrated. Because, there is nothing normal in her. She is a rude, non-social, skinny, withdrawn, and insecure 23-year-old girl. At first sight not exactly the image we would like to see reflected on our mirror. But her resolution to fix her many problems on her own despite her fragility, and her ignorance of social rules, builds an unbreakable bond with the readers eager to see her succeding and overshadows the nice, handsome, self-confident journalist Mikael Blomkvist, even though the story is told by him. 

Not only has not the language been this time a set back, but I have found the translation by Reg Keeland colourful and energetic, full of vivid expresions.

In the beginning I thought to make a break after finishing this thick of a book, but I am not sure anymore, partially because I didn make such an effort to read and also because I was left brooding how the relation between Mikael and Lisbeth will follow.

Lisbeth Salander

Mikael Blomkvist

Erika Berger

Martin Vanger

Henrik Vanger

Cecillia Vanger

Harriet Vanger

Nils Bjurman

Dirch Frode

A most wanted man

John le Carré

Ed. Simon&Schuster, 2008

First book by John le Carré I have ever read, so I knew almost nothing about his style and thus it got me in surprise. I expected a classic spy plot, a short novel plenty of mystery and full of abrupt twists. Therefore I was not shocked by the smell of something known, of something already read before the first chapters spread. This feeling was reinforced by the tricky title of the book that suggested that it was all about a young mysterious, enigmatic, ragged, chechenian, skinny and allegedly muslim worshipper, Issa, that sneaks into Hamburg. All of this remind me of Ken Foller’s bestseller The key to Rebecca, where a nazy spy managed to enter Cairo during WWII and an english counterintelligence official began to look for him.

So it seemed to me that the book was almost finished from its very beginning. I could not be more wrong. Soon Issa’s presence in this town disrupts the otherwise unlikely linked lives of very different people: Melik, young turkish boxing champion, and Leyla, his recently widowed mother, who give Issa shelter despite the suspicions of Melik; Tommy Brue, president of Brue Frères PLC bank, who is demanded to issue him the generous inheritance his father, a heartless russian Colonel, achieved after a long life of stealing, murdering and raping innocent chechenians and then have it laundered at Frères by Tommy’s father on hidden accounts knicknamed Lizipanners after the Spanish riding school horses at Vienna; Annabel Ritcher, a young and idealistic lawyer of Sanctuary North, a charitable christian foundation for protecting displaced people, and personal counsel of the lean russian refugee, who helps him claiming the money from Tommy Brue; and finally, Günther Bachman, an old sharp german spy with no academic qualification, but nevertheless largely skilled by the time expended in a big deal of missions all over the world, and his team (Erna Frey, his faithfull assistant, Maximiliam, stammerer hacker and Niki, Maximiliam’s girlfriend from audio section). Any of this people see Issa’s from their own biased point of view and thus treat him accordance to it: as a poor muslism, a doubtful client, a wrecked refugee or a internationally watched chechenian terrorist. And without one noticing it, the author subtlety changes completely the point of the novel: the story is no longer about a plain seek of a suspect but about a sharp criticism to modern world’s picture. A narrative where uncertainties, suspicions, fear to the extranger, specially if it is poor and muslim, governments control of everyone’s privacy, joined to a marked inefficiency of their intelligence services to catch up terrorist group’s way of doing, leave few room to optimism, idealism and well-meaning.

A dark painting, like a Goya’s work, where the author gives few clues to the reader, where the main characters are not deeply drawn, just a few brush strokes and the reader has to fill the gaps left. As long as I have read about le Carré, this seems to be his trademark, his style.

As an english learner I have found the plot of the book easy to follow, but I feel I have not fully understood the nuances all critics praise about.  

The key to Rebecca

Ken Follet
New American Library, 1980

"The last camel collapsed at noon." That's the way this cloak-and-dagger book starts. Catching you from the very first moment. There is no doubt why this novel turned his author into one of the most famous bestsellers writter: it is a well built story set in the Second World War at Egypt, in which sex, action and intrigue are mixed up in proper portions to get the secret potion every bestseller writter looks for to trap readers like in a spiderweb. A simple task? To make things simple is the hardest stuff. And Follet is one of the most brilliant writter in that matter. Beyond the deep investigating work on historic details, battles of the North African campaign, troop movements, Rommel´s tactics, weapons and uniforms wore by both armies, he managed to give every caracter of his story a lifelike touch, so everything seems to happen just in front of you. The atmosphere of  Cairo at that time, with its narrow streets, cafés, british patrolls, street vendors, beggars and night clubs, is specilly very well outlined. But as it happens to me with most thriller books, all the great values shown by the author in the begining of the book, slightly vanish as the story goes on. As if it was easier to think up a good story than to finish it. The ends of these books use to don´t live up to the created expectations. Suddenly, at some point of the book, later the more skillful the writter is, magic dissapears, and you begin to see the action from distance, the reader doesn´t live inside the story anymore and everything, characters and plot, seems to have been seen thousands of times before. And you end up thinking, how he did it? How he trapped me that way? As when lights are switched on in the theater when magician show has ended.

Quietly in their sleep

Donna Leon
Penguin Books

First book I have ever read of Donna Leon and her famous Venetian Commisario Guido Brunetti’s mystery series. And as in every great expectation there have been disappointments and charms. Among the last ones the powerful way of the author of creating an intriguing crime case almost from nothing, subtlety pulling you down through the great deal of bends and cul-de-sacs Donna settles down along the whole novel to create the proper atmosphere she thinks the story needs. It counts also the funny dialogues between Commisario and some of his co-workers (like the ones with his chief’s secretary, Signorina Elektra, about her hacker skills or the ones with Sergeant Vianello and his exercising habits after work). Or the charming scenes of Brunetti’s family affairs. But Donna´s novels are especially well known for their evocative descriptions of Venice. I am not saying Venice has no place in this novel, but not as much as I would have liked. At least not in the way landscape had in Anthony Mann’s westerns.

And what else could I expect from it if I chose it among all other Donna’s titles just because it was quite affordable in length? Along the little more than 250 pages of the paperback version I read, Brunetti runs an investigation he even doesn’t believe in, at least at the beginning, and which will lead him to face some of the most powerful forces of Catholic Church. Everything begins with the suspicions of a young nursing sister about the deaths of five of her patients at a local old people’s home. After the first inquiries he doesn’t found any criminal fact. But a few weeks later two events are going to change Brunetti’s mind: one of the deceased’s heir is found dead at his home apparently by natural causes, and someone has run over the former nun almost killing her. From this point on he focuses on discovering who is behind all of this even against his chief’s commands. All the citizen’s cynicism, liking on gossip, knowledge of corruption and fear of government and police that arises along the story is balanced by the loyalty of Commisario co-workers and the warmth of his family’s love. But above all of this lies the main point of the novel: the always difficult relationships between Catholic Church and laic society especially in countries like Italy or even Spain too. We can find this topic in Brunetti’s marriage (he a not very convinced catholic, she a fighting atheist), in Brunetti’s children religion teacher character who is found to harass young girls, in many of the investigation suspects and in the absurd presence of Opus Dei (which seems it has to appear in whatever story catholic religion has a role to play on the plot, never mind if good or bad). More over the plot ends without any criminal in jail, as if telling us there is no way, not yet al least, to fight against Church.

All the above taken into account I have to say I have read it with so much delight and interest that it is the english written book which I have finished fastest. So soon I finished it that I thought it was maybe too simple and so not so good. But as it happens with so many other things the simpler, the more difficult to achieve.