Stockholm and New York
The armchair traveller. – first to Stockholm and Southern Sweden with Stieg Larsson and his amazing trilogy starting with “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” Clearly the work of an obsessive – every journey is lovingly detailed, street by street, bus by bus, tunnelbana by tunnelbana, and we are always told what a main character is wearing – also a lot of computer detail which is way beyond my ken- but the story is fantastic, perhaps literally so, though Larsson would have you believe otherwise. Very tightly plotted, the violence quite extreme in places but kept in proportion to the investigative business. And Lisbeth Salander, the main female character, is unique. Absolutely brilliant !
Unlike the first of two New York novels: “The Believers” by Zoe Heller. A family drama where none of the characters excites much interest or sympathy, poorly written, lots of cliches and which doesn’t enhance one’s understanding of the world or human nature. It might pass as a couple of episodes of a tv sitcom.
“Netherland” on the other hand, with it’s cricket-playing Dutch exile in New York, a passive man to whom things mostly just happen, is well worth the read. Chuck Ramkissoon, the cricket-playing, scam-promoting West Indian is the real hero, along with all the other exiles who make up most of the population of New York and bring their own local customs with them. The shadow of 9/11 is there in the background – saps the dutchman’s will. Some nice pen pictures of The Hague, incidental to the New York stuff.