Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Finished Annotation

Larsson, Stieg. The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo. Canada: Penguin, 2008. Print. (590 pages)

            The last books I read, The Help and Water For Elephants were stories that dealt with life in America from the 1930's to the 1960's. The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo is a change of both the time period and location. Because it takes place in Sweden, and uses Swedish terminology, it was an entirely new and refreshing experience. This book was based around present day which made the words and dialect easy to follow and understand. However, even though the terminology is from modern day language, it is still written by a Swedish author who used a lot of foreign jargon that I was not used to which did actually make the book a bit more challenging to read. One of the interesting things I noticed while reading the book was that some of the words in English were actually spelled differently or used differently than I would normally be accustomed to. Another difficulty I faced while reading the book was my lack of knowledge on Sweden's geography. I often found myself looking up the locations of places mentioned in the book for a better understanding of what was going on. Although some of the language and locations were unfamiliar, I still found the book to be a very interesting and quick read.

           I think that the book started out a little slow but it could have been due to the foreign difficulties I illustrated above. The author does a good job of describing the characters and their experiences in such a way that it didn't take long before I felt a connection with the two main characters. I think that because the author also chose to write the book from the first perspective of both characters, it really added depth and sincerity to the novel.

            I really enjoyed this book. It was a mystery, suspense, and action novel all in one. It takes the normal mystery story and adds new depth to it that I would have never considered doing. The diversity that this book had really sparked my interest and the balance of description and action was phenomenal. I have to admit that there were a few slow sections, but that can be expected of any novel especially with a length comparable to this one's. My overall rating is that this book was fantastic. It had drama, romance, suspense, mystery, and action all tied into 590 pages. I would recommend this to just about everyone because as soon as they get a good amount of the way through the book, I can almost be positive they will have a hard time setting it down.