Outside Reading #3: Book Review

Janet Maslin opens her review Stoking the Fire Larsson Ignited with a slightly confusing and completely irrelevant passage from the subject of her review, the book Three Seconds. Already the reader is put off by Maslin’s writing style; a glib introduction and a pointless quote followed by a dizzying paragraph of sentences of one word and sentences 32 words.

After introducing the reader to the already well known and popular Stieg Larsson, Maslin goes on to compare the two authors of Three Seconds, Anders Roslund, a journalist, and Borge Hellstrom, an ex-criminal, to the famous author; but it is clear that any connection is a stretch. She uses pleonasm too often and her style seems like a young high school student attempting to impress peers with flowery language, “But “Three Seconds” is the first Roslund and Hellstrom book that has been wishfully packaged to suggest that “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” has a second cousin.” And again the constant comparison to Larsson’s novels. It quickly becomes clear that Maslin is not reviewing Three Seconds as a stand alone novel but as a ‘cousin’ to Larsson’s trilogy. This presumes the reader has 1) read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and 2) they enjoyed it.

In the next paragraph Maslin goes on to list all the awards to book has won and how long it spent on top seller lists, “Three Seconds spent the better part of a year on Swedish best-seller lists. Its authors won a prize — the Swedish Academy of Crime Writers’ Award for Swedish Crime Novel of the Year — that has also been awarded to Larsson and Henning Mankell.” Note the reference to the ever present Larsson. This information does not need to be included in a book review, in fact including this paragraph is completely against book review etiquette. The article should just be a subjective review of one book. A list of statistics makes for a boring read.

Maslin finally touches on the plot but she fails to go into any depth, instead she focuses on the length, “So this is a nearly 500-page book with a many-faceted plot, and the authors are in no hurry to bring their story into focus”. Thank you, Maslin, we now know the book is ‘nearly 500 pages’. What about that plot, Maslin, unsurprisingly fails to elaborate, she says “There’s a nugget of social criticism at the heart of this plot idea” and she gives a nugget of critique. I have not even read the book and I can say the is more than “a nugget of social criticism” popular crime and mystery novels set in a changing Sweden are full of social criticism. I just got the impression Maslin was too lazy to write anything substantive; and laziness does not score well on an AP essay. Her lack of evidence also makes this a weak candidate for an AP essay. 

Towards the end of her essay Maslin tries to makes amends, or more accurately- excuses. Stating “Perhaps something is lost in translation”. Or perhaps the entire meaning of her critique was lost in her obsession with Larsson.