I love Lisbeth Salandar

I just finished "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson. It was one of the best books I've ever read.

It's the first book in trilogy penned by Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson before his death from, what some would say, foul play ... (?)

I won't go there but the novel is set in Sweden and its got two protagonists – Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salandar – the latter of which I am in love with. It's a strange feeling, being in love with a character in a book, a work of fiction, a figment of another person's imagination. A figment of a dude's imagination no less ...

And alas, Lisbeth is not real and besides ... I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work out.
She's a euro-punk-goth with Asberger's, a photographic memory and a past full of mystery, inner pain and trauma. I, on the other hand, am a relatively well-adjusted American farm boy who is not a bisexual nymphomaniac.

We just don't have much in common.

But back to the book. Blomkvist is a financial reporter from Stockholm who's reputation has been dashed upon the rocks of libel prosecution because he can't, or won't, back up a story he wrote exposing a evil billionaire banker. Exiled from Stockholm, Blomkvist retreats to the backwoods – roughly 100 miles from where he was (I love Europeans' sense of geography) and begins working for an aging lion, a retired industrialist with a considerable fortune and a lot on his mind ... murder! Duh, duh, duuuuuh!

The old man, one Henrik Vanger, employs Blomkvist to unravel the half-a-century-old mystery of his missing niece – Harriet.

I won't spoil anything but along the way Blomkvist's and Salandar's paths cross and there is plenty of rape, sadism, torture, journalism and intrigue to go 'round.

One of the most interesting aspects of the novel, and of Larsson's writing, is the role of sex and gender relations. If any of you are planning to read the novels I hope this won't taint your view of the story but I think that Larsson was a really good journalist, but a man preoccupied by eroticism, gender-guilt and skewed priorities.

The way he crafts a story is almost flawless. But it all hinges around violence towards women and the characters' reactions, both positive and negative, to that. As for women characters there seem to be two types – victims and Lisbeth, who is herself the perfect victim (as one character muses in the novel). As for the males there are also two distinct character types – the pedophile/sadist/rapist or the paternal hero – aka Blomkvist and every other pervert with a penis.

Forgive me - that will be my most critical graf of the post - because as I said earlier: It really is quite good.

Yet I find myself frusterated by the the author's "European sensibilities" towards gender relations, his unquestioning bias against faith and personal commitment (and question is what a journo should do, mind you) and his all-together droll attitude toward the familial relationship.

First I should mention that Blomkvist is an unquestionable surrogate for Larsson himself – Larsson's self image. The man that Larsson sees himself as. An ace reporter, good looking, confident, a ladies man, able and resourceful. He's everything a sophisticated European man would want to be.

But in him I see the elements of a little boy. Though he is respectful and kind he sleeps with women because it pleases him. After that he gives them little lasting thought. He is a father. And his daughter gives him the key to unwraveling the entire mystery! Yet he speaks to her for less than six grafs in a 400+ page novel. And the tortured soul of Lisbeth Salandar – an asocial misfit crying out for a someone, anyone that won't use her, rape her, or otherwise urinate on her dignity is left wanting because a Blomkvist thinks that sleeping with women can be as calm, rational and emotionally uninvolved as buying a pineapple at the grocery store.

I supposed I don't love Lisbeth Salandar – I identify with her. I wished the character peace.

But she will never have that. She can't. It spoils the conceit. And the conceit comes from the fact that people depend on each other, everybody needs somebody, but if you're selfish – no matter if you like to rape, murder or simply philander – you choose yourself, your knife or your penis before others. And that act of selfishness, whether bloodily violent or happily erotic, leads only to pain and isolation.

But that's just what I think.