Sep 02 2010
Three books: Swedish crime, allegorical tales and first-person shooters
Last book group I picked up two books but didn’t get round to reading either for ages. The second one, North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, is proving too difficult so I might just abandon it where I am. I certainly don’t think I’ll get it read by next weekend.
What have I read then?
Three to See the King (Magnus Mills) is a strange tale about a man who lives in a tin house on a desert plane, a mile or so away from other people who live in their lone tin houses. The story follows the fate of a grand excavation, with thousands of people trying to build a new township with tin houses. The prose is very flat and the humour dry and deadpan. Whatever I picked up from this book I’m sure I missed most of it. It was interesting, though really I’m not sure if I recommend it.
Pandaemonium is Christopher Brookmyre’s latest homage to computer games.
The premise of Doom is relocated from the moons of Mars to the wilds of Scotland (but of course…) and the lone marine replaced by schoolchildren, teachers and a couple of Catholic priests. And it’s great.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Stieg Larsson) is pretty popular these days. This and the two sequels seem to sit permanently on the Amazon bestseller list. I can only partially see why. The story is fairly involving, with a few interesting mysteries unravelled by the end, but the writing is absolutely atrocious. Most of the time it’s not descended to the Dan Brown level but occasionally the tone of the prose is so badly off-kilter it makes you wonder if it was written by a native speaker. Of course, it wasn’t written by a native speaker, so the real question is whether this wooden and lumpen writing is an accurate reflection of Larsson’s Swedish source text, or whether the translator was just an idiot.
2 Responses to “Three books: Swedish crime, allegorical tales and first-person shooters”
While there’s always room for interpretation, I find your reaction to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo quite strange. I was taken with how good the prose was, and was tending to assume excellent translation was part of the reason for it.
I agree with Nick.
This comment would have been much funnier in May.