A Man Called Ove

Photo: the paperback's cover, from its Goodreads page

Outstanding book, alternately funny and sad, wise and silly, that became a huge bestseller around the world via word-of-mouth--a true rarity. The author, a Swede living in Stockholm, hadn't had a bestseller before, but the grapevine took off with this one, and rightly so. You should read it.

Ove is an older man who loses his wife and his job in six months. Like most of us, especially as we get older, his life revolves around those two things, and with them both gone, he's got nothing. Or so he thinks. He spends a great deal of time not living, both before he met his wife and after she died, and this book is a good warning to not live that way. Your life is what you make of it, so you'd better make something of it.

The book is never preachy, but it seems very true. Things turn out pretty well, and almost everyone in it is like the Abominable--good people inside who just need someone to flesh it out. It's a little too nice and neat at the end, but that's the kind of pleasant book it is, and you'll be okay with that, even if you're not normally, in books and in daily life. I'm sure as hell not, and it worked really well for me.

Also true to know is that Ove is an older guy who is the definition of a curmudgeon. I've often been called a little grumpy myself, and the thing to know, this book says, is that such people a) have reasons for being that way, all sad and unbelievable, and b) that's not all who and what they are.

What is also good and rare about Ove is that he is no talk and all action (Stupid is as stupid DOES), and that he has a set standard of morals and life lessons he lives by that seem strict and unbending only to those who don't have them and who don't understand those who do. I speak from experience here. But he is a very strong and steadfast guy, of a high moral compass, even if he does come across as just a tick easier to deal with than Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets. But where Melvin Udall (the character name just came to me) has a clinical obsessive-compulsive diagnosis (which Ove may also share), Ove has a life of hard knocks and solitary strength that has led him to become this man. 

Seeing him learn to live life again, and yet stay true to his own character, is a helluva ride that you'll want to take. And you won't forget that you took it. I recommend this book very, very much.

The Girl Who Played with Fire--Swedish Movie

photo: Noomi Rapace, about to terrify.  From rogerebert.com.

Overall this second film of the series was better than the very good first film, which makes sense, as the second novel in the series was superior to the first.  I suspect that the American version of the second book will stay as true to its original as the first did; this Swedish version kept more closely aligned to the source than did the first one, but still not too much.  And so there's little to say here that I didn't already say for the first movie, when I compared that to what I felt was a superior American version.  (You can read that here.  And you can read more of my blog entries about the movies and books here, here, and here.)  So I just have a few tidbits, some more relevant, I suppose, than others.

--The closing credits to this Swedish-language film play to an English-language song, Misen Groth's "Would Anybody Die."  The credits themselves, of course, were predominantly in Swedish, but every now and then you'll see "Worldwide Distribution," or "Collection Agent," or "Completion Bond."  There isn't a way to translate these last three into their Swedish equivalents?

--You'll be hard-pressed to find an American film, spoken in American English, with end credits that play to a foreign-language song.  Give the Swedes credit here.

--The film itself plays unlike American films.  I was surprised at the difference, but I don't know why.  It's just simpler, and I mean that in a good, stripped-down kind of way.  No flash, no substance.  The viewer is content to see the movie unfold at its own pace, which is slow compared to an American film of the violent, serial killer, suspense genre.  When the action does happen, it isn't glorified, which American movie violence so clearly is.  This last is maybe the biggest difference between the films of the two countries.

--Maybe it's the substance of Salander and Blomqvist, but the film seems to indicate that the average Swede in general is more advanced technologically.  There was a computer in every house of every character, even in the log cabin in the woods.  I haven't made it a point to notice, but I'm going to guess that this is not shown in American movies to this degree.  Is it the movie style, or is it that Americans aren't as connected?  And, if the latter is true, how in God's name is that possible?

--Michael Nyqvist and Lena Endre are almost completely naked in one scene.  There is no way they would be in an American movie, and I mean that in the kindest of all possible ways.  But here it fits--they're lovers, after all.  More than that, they play average--maybe slightly better than average--looking people in their, say, mid-40s, who do not work out or do anything that your average Swede in their 40s wouldn't do.  So he's hairy and a bit out of shape, and a tad flabby.  She's wrinkly and a little saggy.  And it's--normal.  Again, no glitz, no flash, no substance.  And they're known, for God's sake, for their brains and persistence, more than their sexiness.  Again, so much not an American movie, and I mean this in a good way.  It's more real.

--I'm thankful that not one character eats an open sandwich in any of the three Millennium films I've seen.  This happens maybe 5,000 times in the three books, to the point that you wonder about their cholesterol counts.

--Salander's half-brother doesn't see demons in this film.  Okay by me, but then you wonder why he just drops the bar he's holding and simply walks away at the end, when he clearly could've taken care of Blomqvist and finished off his father and half-sister, had he the desire.

--Lots of scenes where characters are sitting down and explaining things to other characters, usually while sipping coffee and/or smoking.  (Again, you wonder about the health of the average Swede.)  Anyway, this simply wouldn't happen in an American movie, as it would be considered too slow and boring.  I mean, it is slow, but that's real, right?  It works here because this sort of thing is consistent throughout the movie and series, and books.  I'm no sleuth, but I'll bet investigations really do unfold like that.  So why not show it that way?

--Speaking of smoking cigarettes, I hope Rapace smokes fake ones in the movies, like they do on Mad Men, because she's consumed about 25 cartons in the two films.  And is it okay that I say that Rapace looks prettier in this one, with her longer hair?

--Swedish cities look like pretty, happenin' places.  Swedish countryside, not so much.  Very, very blech.  I know it's countryside, and I know it doesn't really look like it does in The Wizard of Oz, but here it just looks drab and depressing.  And wet, splotchy and old.

--Ambulances in Sweden are canary yellow, and have an odd shape.  Not odd to the Swedes, though, of course.

--Swedish cities look clean.  Where are all the cigarette butts?

--Roger Ebert disagreed with my comparison to the first film, saying that they're both good, but the first one was better.  But what does he know about films?

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Movie, Swedish vs. American

Photo: poster for the Swedish movie, from its Wikipedia page


Rented the Swedish version, the original, of course, and figured I would share my thoughts about it, as compared to David Fincher's American film.  Feel free to agree, or disagree.  And please read my write-up of the American film here.  Reading what I wrote about Fincher's direction and Rooney Mara's performance may lead to a better reading of the critique of the Swedish film, below.

--Noomi Rapace's performance deserves its many accolades, and gets extra points for being the first, which, rightly or not, sets the stage for all other interpretations of the role, and must be the one all others are compared to.  If another performance were to be better than this--which I believe Rooney Mara's is--then it must be as juxtaposed to this one, in accordance to its successes and failures.  This makes Rapace's performance all that more singular.

But it doesn't make it better, though a better/worse distinction isn't what this art is all about, and is almost nonsense anyway, as both performances are very good.  In this case, I think it has to do with the script, which I believe is superior in the American film.  It calls for Lisbeth to be edgier, scarier, more vulnerable, and easier to be sympathetic to.  This will be dealt with in better detail later, but the final word here, regarding performance, is that, frankly, Rooney Mara had more to work with, and she gave it her all, which the combination of script and director allowed her to do.  Rapace undoubtedly would have, as well, had she been given the chance.  But she wasn't.

--So, the script is better in Finch's version, and this I can explain easily.  The American film, surprisingly, follows the book much more closely than does the original Swedish version.  This is shocking because a) American films are notorious worldwide for bastardizing its original source, which it does not do here, and b) the Swedish film is, of course, based on the book from Sweden, and so therefore has, you would think, more allegiance to the film.  The Swedish film is the highest-grossing film in Swedish history, and it was followed very closely by the other two films in the series--all of which is based on the best-selling novel (and novels) in recent Swedish history.  One would think that the pressure to be faithful to the book was extreme, but apparently not.

[Spoilers coming; be forewarned.]

While following the evidence more closely than the American version (but not by much, and perhaps it does so just a little more clearly, rather than closely), the script veers dramatically in the characterization of Salander.  For example, you see her in bed with another woman when Blomqvist arrives at her apartment, but in the book, her sexuality is a big deal with her character, and the bisexuality plays a major role in her development.  It adds to her confusion, or rebelliousness, or search for affection, or yearning for affection and attention, or...whatever you want to call it.  But it matters.  Here, it's very glossed over, with just the woman's appearance in her bed.  You're missing a lot if you don't get this part of her character.  Fincher's American film did this much better.

The same could be said for her mentor who suffers the heart attack, who is totally and oddly absent from the Swedish film.  He also represents her confusion, longing for affection, father-figure (important, considering what she did to her real father, and considering what a horrible person he was) and loss.  This latter is most important, because she is born to the father from Hell, then is given to a saintly man--but then she is given the custodian from Hell when this man is struck; her father is the Devil, then her father-figure is switched with the Devil, and, more crucially, the fact that he was her only positive interpersonal relationship to the outside world is thrown away if you throw his character away, which the Swedish version does.  This is huge.  The American film does this much better, and by doing so, it gave Fincher's and Mara's Salander more to emote about, more to suffer from, more to lose.  This only deepens her character.  Rapace never got this chance.  And I can't ignore the obvious by pointing out that Blomqvist is her father-figure/lover, a distinction that is so obvious that I, thankfully, don't need to go into it.  Except I'll say that the pendulum of father-figure has swung again, from good, to bad, back to good again.  Which leads to...

The relationship between Blomqvist and his editor/friend/lover from Millennium is also completely and strangely absent from the Swedish film.  When he goes back to her at the end of the American film (and in the book), it only adds another layer of loss to Salander's character, as her connecting to him was a major achievement in of itself for her.  When he leaves her (notice at the end of the Swedish film, he's still in jail, and she leaves him), he takes away the only stable and positive relationship she has to anyone outside her family, or still-living mentor.  That is a HUGE loss that Larsson clearly understood and intended--and obviously juxtaposed with Harriet Vanger returning to her own father-figure/mentor, the man who replaced her own Devil-father.  (Surprisingly, Harriet Vanger's father is the Devil, while Salander's father was more like his Beelzebub.)  They never forgot each other all those years.  That's such an obvious Shakespearean foil-character juxtaposition that I am shocked the Swedish filmmakers chose to completely disregard it.  To do so throws away the most tragic elements of Salander's character.  This is astonishing--especially as it does not honor the original source.

It is jaw-dropping to me that the American film version honors the characterization and true spirit of the original Swedish text much more so than does the Swedish film.  I at first wondered why an American film company would bother making a film based on an already-appreciated Swedish film based on an already-successful Swedish book.  Now I know--Fincher had a much better script to work with, and he knew it.

I point out all of these differences--and there are many more, but this will suffice, I guess (no, wait, there are more below)--because Lisbeth Salander is of course the heart of this series of books and movies.  It goes where she goes.  She is the energy, the spirit, the real, fleshy character.  She's the one the audience really connects to, and hopes for, and feels for.  Larsson knew this from the beginning, which is why he focused on her so much (and why the third book flopped so badly, because he strangely wouldn't let her do anything).  To throw away so much of her character in the Swedish movie's script is to throw her away--and she's the beating heart of the whole thing!

Okay, so a few more differences that really bothered me:

Her sexuality is severely torn down in the Swedish movie, which is odd, because the Swedish culture and lifestyle is much less prudish, really, than is America's.  That's a huge part of who she is, and it's nowhere in the film.  Her past of drugs, crime and institutionalization is also nowhere to be found in the Swedish film--which is, again, throwing away everything that she is, and all that she is trying to change from.  Throwing away her embezzlement wizardry is also a mistake, as that helps her become a new her, which she did in part to be with Blomqvist, and it's because she loves him (in her own way) that she does all that research, delivers it to him, then dons her wig and takes all of Wennerstrom's money, which she knows will lead him to being knocked off by the criminals he worked with.  And this is what happens, which the Swedish film completely glosses over when it says that he clearly killed himself instead.  She basically kills him in the book, and in the American film, and she does this because he set Blomqvist up, sent him to prison, ruins his reputation, and, for God's sake, she's protecting the guy she loves and avenging his sacrifice.  The Swedish movie blows all this by ending the way it did, which blows her attempt to connect to someone, and to change--and it is this attempt to change that is ruined by the ending of the book and the American movie, when he goes back to his publisher/friend/lover, which the Swedish film also completely ignored.  And, lastly, the Swedish version is missing Salander's considerable rage, specifically towards Men Who Hate Women--which is why it's a shame that the Swedish version didn't include her asking Blomqvist at the end, "Can I kill him?" when she goes after Martin Vanger.  Not giving a bit of air time to her rage also erases a huge part of her characterization and character.  She isn't Lisbeth Salander without it, and the Swedish film completely misses that.  Rooney Mara had that nailed: that rage.  That ever-present anger.

The American film has ALL of this, and more.  It is clearly better, and so is, therefore, Rooney Mara's performance.  She had a completely fleshed-out, round and changing character to work with, and defined her to the hilt.  Her interpretation was more than worthy of her Oscar nomination.  A much more thorough, edgy, sexy, intelligent, sociopathic, empathetic, sympathetic and engaging character to watch and to root for.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

Photo: Cover of the Swedish first edition, on its Wikipedia page

A pretty good read, not as good as the first two; it pales in comparison, especially, to the second one because of ...Played with Fire's intensity at the end.  There's not much intensity in the last one here.  This stands to reason--Salander is inherently the only super-intense character, and she's stuck in a hospital room, a jail and a courtroom for most of this book.  When she's out, she gets involved in some intense action almost immediately.

Larsson again gets away with a lackluster first half--or the whole middle--of the book, and this time it really grated at me.  There are some frankly unnecessary scenes, and there's a subplot with someone stalking Erika Berger that is excessive and unnecessary.  (A guy she ignored in high school is harassing her at her new job.)  The only interesting part of this is that Lisbeth helps her find who it is.  (Remember that Lisbeth saw Blomqvist and Berger together at the end of the first one.)  But this part rings a bit untrue: Lisbeth, I think, would help Berger find the harasser because a) Lisbeth hates men who hate women, and b) she's excessively bored, and hacking into people's computers to expose them is interesting to her.  But what's false is that Berger wouldn't have accepted her help, no matter how desperate.

There are other problems.  The most glaring is that a senior citizen hitman was able to shoot a former nationally-important espionage agent in a hospital.  This spy had no sort of bodyguard, no police protection, no nothing.  He also would never have stayed in the same hospital as his original attacker, who was just a few rooms down.  They definitely wouldn't have both been unprotected, especially her, as she was a hated and sought-after person for a long time.  There are many more items of this sort, though this was the most obvious.  Naturally two people who just tried to kill each other--and who are nefarious and related--wouldn't be placed within a few rooms of each other in the same hallway.  And they'd have guards.

The trial was practically an after-thought, and not very realistic, either.  The prosecution, glaringly, had no case, and you would think they'd have bolstered it considering they were dealing with an infamous celebrity by that time.  All they had was a psychiatrist whose testimony a kid in a mock trial could've annihilated.  He clearly had preconceived notions; Lisbeth obviously had reasons not to talk to him or anyone else in authority.  And when everyone swore to the hills that her guardian was a great guy who she murdered, they proved that the prosecution had no evidence that she'd killed him--and then they played the movie.  End of trial.

All that's left over is to find her half-brother, which she does--though every cop in the country, and tons of lawyers representing her father's estate--should have investigated the property she goes to.  The relationship between Blomkvist and a cop is not convincing, and once again a beautiful, independent woman couldn't keep her clothes on in front of him.  The chances she takes after living a life of professional independence is unrealistic.  People do dumb things--but every woman he meets takes a dumb chance because they have to have be with him.  This includes a married woman (whose husband goes along with it, rather happily), an emotionally and psychologically bereft young woman, and a previously missing millionairess who'd been abused by her father and brother until her mid-teens.

Humph!

Having said all that, the book works while you're reading it, though the above examples had begun to get to me after awhile.  The second book also excelled because the women in it mostly kept their clothes on in front of him.  It was all mystery, intrigue and tension, and zero forced relationships.  Had he lived, I bet Larsson would have realized this, and gone back to that winning formula.  I suspect that his love interest here would've been disposed of in the next book, a la the Bourne movies and its like.  Certainly we would've finally met Salander's elusive twin sister.

The book ends well, as we knew it had to.  He had, after all, stuck by her and saved her in the second book, and basically in the third.  It says in the end that she realized she no longer had any feelings for him in that way, and that also ends like it should, though I don't buy it for a second.  Their relationship, and his with Erika Berger, were clearly the most realized and realistic.  Had there been a fourth book, I suspect there would've been maybe a little more tension there, and Berger very clearly tells his current flame that she'll try and stay away from him, but makes no promises.  He doesn't, either, for that matter.  This wouldn't sit well with her.

Odd and interesting thing about the books is that it shows that getting old is hell.  Every old man is dying of some kind of cancer, or is shot but lives for months as a vegetable, or is set on fire, loses a hand and foot, gets shot a few times, and then finally dies after getting shot a few more times.  Or has a stroke but recovers fairly well, if not painfully.  Old men do not age or die well here.

Lisbeth Salander is by far the most thoroughly and realized character in the books, and rightfully carries the distinction of being one of the more realistic and defined female characters in the genre.  No helpless lady in distress here, and no femme fatale.  She is only herself, and by the end was beginning to realize who that was.  Unfortunately, even she is a pale shadow of herself in the last book, but even that is enough to distinctly define and carry on her character.

I'm very interested in Lisbeth, Berger and Blomkvist.  I hope Larsson's partner and his father and brother can resolve their issues before too long, and that someone lets her finish his book, as I agree with her that she is the only one in a position to know what Larsson himself wanted to do with these characters.  Some hired gun shouldn't take over the series and throw his own beliefs into Salander.  Larsson was trying to say something important through her, and only he--and, second best, his partner--have any idea what he wanted to say next.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo--Book

Photo: Original Swedish book cover, from its Wikipedia page

I suppose you already know the sordid background of the author: how he died climbing up seven floors because his lift wasn't working; because he'd been at least a three to four pack a day smoker for a long time.  You probably know that his real job was as an editor of magazines that exposed things that the bad guys would rather have left alone; that he didn't get married to his long-time partner because he'd been getting death threats and so didn't want his address in the public records; about how, since there was no will, his partner was legally entitled to nothing, including the royalties to the mega-selling books; about how his father and brother--whom he was estranged from--have therefore made millions of dollars (and kronen) from his work.  She has since sued them; supposedly they have offered her a few million to go away.  About how millions more are coming in for royalties to the movies, and about how she's basically blackmailing everybody by saying that she has the manuscripts for most of the fourth (about three-quarters) and some of the fifth installments of the series (there might have been ten had he lived to write them all).  And, finally, about how she says she has all of his notes and outlines for the fourth book, and therefore should be the one to finish it.  (You can bet that someone will; much like how Robert B. Parker finished Raymond Chandler's Poodle Springs, and how others are now writing his many series.)

Well, if you didn't know all that, there you are.  Sounds like a murder-mystery in of itself.

I'd rather write about how this book sort of breaks the mold.  It essentially does everything that many agents and publishers say they don't want: shifting 3rd person POV (if you want to say that Lisbeth is a co- major character, remember that the other intrusively tells us what Frode, Martin, and other minor characters are thinking, often in snippets); waiting 50 or so pages before the main mystery is established; titling the book after a minor character (admittedly, Larsson chose the first book's title, and maybe the second, but definitely not the third.  They're published in his home country under very different titles); carrying on the book for over 100 pages after the main mystery has been solved.  Many examples of author intrusion, especially when he has to step in to tell us how a magazine office runs.  You get the idea.

All no-nos.  But Larsson does them all, and manages to pull it off.

Partly this is because he digs so deeply into the characters that they themselves, rather than the plot, carry the novel.  The writing tone is consistent throughout, regardless as to who's being focused on.  The detail is super, from the weather, to the towns, to the characters.  (He hedges a bit on how all the hacking and financial disbursements are accomplished.)  The dialogue is mostly good (though all the characters talk in compound sentences, with a "," followed by an "and."  Lisbeth especially would not do this, and it makes all the characters sound somewhat alike; I'll bet Larsson used to talk the same way).

The themes and issues are there, most notably the ill-treatment towards females in Swedish society.  It's apparently just as pandemic as Henning Mankell's assertion about how immigrants are treated in Sweden, as well.  (One wonders with a shudder how the female immigrants are treated.)

But, most importantly, once the staples of the mystery come out--the pictures, tracking down the onlookers who took them, the interviews and the research--he runs with them, even while acknowledging that the plot is essentially a locked-room mystery on an island (like Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None), and that women, regardless of age, apparently can't keep their clothes on around the major character.  The pace picks up and you turn the pages.  It takes awhile to pick up, and there's a long descent, but there's obviously a story arc, just like every writing teacher has ever told you to do.

And so he unconventionally connected the dots, I guess you might say.  And he did it well.  It's too bad he couldn't complete all ten.  Someone else will undoubtedly (and probably later, rather than sooner, because of the courtroom drama) run with it, but it won't be the same.  No other writer, for example, would have littered the book's landscape with mystery writer allusions--and even make a character hide under the name of Victor Fleming, the director of most of The Wizard of Oz and of Gone with the Wind!  We won't see that audacity again.

Faceless Killers--Henning Mankell

Mankell is a writer of Swedish noir; he inspired Stieg Larsson, and, perhaps, me.  I've been purposely trying to learn as I read these days.  Not in an academic way--at least until I take my next Masters class--but in a way that I understand writing better so that my writing is also better.  I wrote a recent blog about this, using Dan Simmons' Drood as a primer, so I won't do that again here.

In short, here's what I liked about Faceless Killers (besides the title).  The thing that struck me first, by about page 20, was that if Raymond Carver wrote Swedish noir, it would turn out like this.  Carver was a writer of more depth than this novel, appropriately, shows, but the type of writing is the same.  Both writers make the very ordinary seem very important.  Carver would write, "He placed the bottle of champagne on the table," in exactly the same way several times in the same 12-page short story, and it would carry weight each time.  (I still don't understand how he was able to do that.)  Mankell does the same here, but, again, without the strange depth.  His words and sentences do have depth, just not the same emotional (or emotionless) as Carver's did.

Secondly, Mankell's Kurt Wallander has very real, gritty problems, shown in very gritty sentences.  For example, and pardon the lack of etiquette here, but Wallender has this gastro-intestinal problem--a combination of bad eating habits and lots of stress, caused by his job and his recent marriage break-up--and the novel shows twice that he eats a hotdog, or a pizza, too fast and has to rush to the bathroom with diarrhea.  And I'm not paraphrasing or inferring here.  It says that he ate too fast, that he had to run to the bathroom, and that he had diarrhea.  The first time, it also says that he realizes he has to change his underwear.  Now that's intense.  The short, clipped, Carver-esque sentences create a dreamy, distant, slowly re-awakening feeling in the character that really is what the novel is about.  That, and what is going wrong with Sweden in those days.  The two-headed theme is: What went wrong with my marriage?--and--What went wrong with Sweden?  They go hand-in-hand here.  The setting, as you'd might expect from Sweden, is a character in of itself in the same way that the same type of weather was for Fargo and Smilla's Sense of Snow.

Anyway, this novel got me to consider ditching the 1st person narration of one of my "finished" mystery mss. and allowing my writing style to show the main character's traits in ways that I thought only 1st person could.  And it also made me realize that although the mystery starts right away in my novel, the actual crime isn't shown until midway.  (Other crimes, including murders and other cases the character takes on, are shown much earlier, all starting on page 1.)  But this was a real eye-opener for me in that it shows that maybe the packaging of my novel is all wrong.

We'll see.  Anyway, Faceless Killers is highly recommended.  I just bought most of the Wallender series a few hours ago.  The supposed last one, A Troubled Man, comes out very soon, the first Wallender book in 10 years.  Mankell says it's definitely the last, but I'll bet he also said that 10 years ago.