Last night I met with my book group for a discussion of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The discussion, as always, had depth tempered with laughter and heated opinion. I have found a great group of women to discuss books with -- other than myself, the group is all from the same family (mom and three daughters). Three of us are/were English majors, and all of us are the kind who read pretty much constantly.
Most of us liked Tattoo, though we all agreed that Blomqvist's tendency to work his way through multiple women without really considering how the briefness of the affair might affect each woman is a little hard to take. He isn't cruel in his attitude toward his partners, he just moves easily from one relationship to another (and sometimes is in more than one relationship at a time) and seems to assume the women will too. Except for his business partner (who is married to a man who knows about her affair and is OK with it. Really?), the women don't just move on.
Several of the characters in the novel are Nazis and one of our discussion questions asked why Nazism was so prevalent in that family. My first response was a little sarcastic: "Because the author wrote it that way." But really, I think the question was asking why such extreme views find fertile ground in certain places? What was it about the Vanger family as a whole that encouraged some of it's members to practice Nazism? We didn't really come up with a definate answer, but discussed the historical situation of Sweden as a possible clue. Any of you have ideas?
Did you know the title of the book, when published in Sweden, was Men Who Hate Women? It wasn't until the novel was published in America that the title was changed to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I find that interesting. The first title really does fit the plot better than the second title. My theory is that readers so identified with, and loved Salander, that the American publishers focused the title on her character, even though she isn't necessarily the protagonist in this novel. I didn't identify with her in the sense that I feel I am like her, but I sometimes wish I could say and do things without worrying what image I am portraying. I would like to spike my hair. I would like to say what I'm thinking more often than I do. (I did finally get a tattoo, but it's a pretty safe-looking flower on my ankle!)
Our next book is Jane Austen's Persuasion. I'm about halfway through and, well, it's not my favorite Austen book. I always need a few chapters/scenes to acclimate to the writing style of previous periods (Dickens, Austen, Shakespeare), and I've always found Austen fairly easy to read once I'm acclimated. This one, though! I keep getting stuck on the vocabulary and sentence structure and find my self reading sections multiple times. We'll see.
