I was persuaded to read this book by my daughter who has read all three in the series and thought they are terrific. I had my doubts but then I read Nora Ephron's spoof on this book in the New Yorker, see link below and knew that I had to check it out.
I am not going to review this book, it needs no help from me to shift copies and I gather a film has also been made so what I think is going to make no difference at all, but I have just finished reading it and really feel I have to pass on my thoughts. I laughed at the Ephron spoof and thought 'Well, gotta read it now' and when I started it I could not believe how close to reality was the spoof - the narrative is chunky
and appallingly badly written (and yes I know it is in translation but that shouldn't really make any difference if the writing is good), and it is full of product placement, the hero journalist has his ipod, his iphone, his ipad, the Girl with the Tattoo has her Kawasaki, her new modem, her Apple notebook blah blah blah blah. There is one page in the book where she has to replace her laptop and we are given a description of her new one, how much memory it has, how many gigabytes, Ram etc and it is so unbelievably banal and just so dire and I stopped laughing and just read on in disbelief. If I say that I said aloud 'Dan Brown, I apologise, come back all is forgiven' you will understand my thoughts on this book.
BUT then it gets nastier and nastier and nastier and I began to feel nauseated. I had guessed who the killer was about a third into the book, if the guy had gone around with a t-shirt on saying IT WAS ME, it could not have been more obvious but then we had all the murders gone into in minute detail as the villain confessed all prior to his attempted killing of our heroic journalist who had uncovered the truth. So we learned all about torture, burning, rape, incest and familial abuse and it was VILE.
I approached this book with a flippant attitude thinking O my God this is going to be sooo bad it is going to be fun.
I was wrong.
It isn't.
I would be really interested to know what others think - I have already found friends who loved it and so I am wondering if my reaction is totally disproportionate. Let me know if this is so.
