Thelma Adams: Novelist, Critic, Oscar Expert

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Book Review: ‘The Crow Girl’

August 1, 2016 By Thelma Leave a Comment

The Crow GirlMy rating: Four of Five Stars

Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro remains a bucket-list challenge, but in the book world, staring down a 784-page Swedish serial-killer novel may make the reader question his or her priorities: Why have I not yet read The Brothers Karamazov or finished Anna Karenina?

With Erik Axl Sund’s perverse murder saga, The Crow Girl, the pseudonymous authors (a handsome pair of black-clad men resembling Scandinavian metal superstars on the back flap), have created a difficult, twisted, irony-free novel with a wildly unreliable narrator.

The book oscillates between good and evil, a scattered female detective, Jeanette Kihlberg, whose imploding family life is a distraction from her cop work. Meanwhile, Kihlberg finds herself increasingly attracted to the highly intelligent therapist, Sofia Zetterlund, who consults on the case when the sexy shrink is not suffering disturbing blackouts.

[Related: Book Review ‘The Ice Child’]

The novel begins with the discovery of the corpse of a young boy, terribly mutilated and mummified. Another child corpse. Another. But then that efficiency ends. The exposition of the first 300 pages is so tangled, the storylines so many, the incidents of child molestation, incest, and torture so repellant, that even a reader who claims The Girl in the Dragon Tattoo as a favorite book may have doubts. They may be tempted to put this novel aside, question the commitment, pick it up again, review earlier pages for missed clues and sigh, looking at all the appealing, shorter books on the nightstand.

And, then, something cracks like ice, the floes begin to move. Generational incidences of fathers molesting daughters and transforming girls into monsters, of grown men behaving badly in actions stemming from their own childhood traumas, and the solution of one mysterious string of seemingly unrelated killings only opening the door to the next, causes the book to break free from its difficult beginnings.

The psychological underpinnings, gradually revealed by the therapist Sofia, who is herself trying to reconstruct her own personality and history of trauma (“Getting to know yourself can be like trying to decipher a cryptogram,” she says toward the book’s conclusion), drives the action forward and the exploration of characters deeper.

[Related: Book Review: ‘The Other Side of Silence’]

Originally published in three volumes, The Crow Girl is a commitment, a doorstop, and a nearly endless psychological puzzle box that creepily crawls from one dysfunctional arena to the next, leaving clues not like breadcrumbs but like bloody bits of ear and entrails. It’s a novel for the committed Scandophile—or those that should be committed.

This review first appeared in the ‘New York Journal of Books.’

Filed Under: Books, Criticism Tagged With: Book Review, New York Journal of Books, Scandinavian mystery, Serial Killers, The Crow Girl, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Countdown to TIFF – 10 Days – Movie Trailer Brian DePalma’s “Passion”

August 27, 2012 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Glossy girl-on-girl action seems so passe, trying too hard. But, in the hands of DePalma, and giving two actresses that have the potential to surprise me — Noomi Rapace and Rachel McAdams — meaty roles, I’m intrigued. I’m not yet buying. Is this more than an old man’s tease? I’m willing to keep an open mind, and even look forward to McAdams and Rapace at play.

Filed Under: Movies & TV Tagged With: Brian DePalma, girl-on-girl action, lesbian allure, Noomi Rapace, Rachel McAdams, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, TIFF12

EW Cover: “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”

November 13, 2011 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Rooney Mara, Daniel Craig, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The girl wrapped around the guy who plays Bond

This cover is exactly what I’ve been afraid of ever since I heard that David Fincher was making the American version of the Swedish best sellers. How very dare he subordinate the girl to the he-man? The title of the books is THE GIRL with the dragon tattoo, and Lisbeth Salander is the main character, the through line. She is definitely no ingenue! I read the first book when it came out in America, and then was so impatient that I ordered the next two from Amazon UK. Her story is a shocking journey that ranges from the highly personal to a scandal capable of taking down a corrupt government. Salander does not need to clutch at the chest of a man, as she’s represented here. My concern has always been that she was too much woman for Fincher to handle. International audiences have been eating her character up; will Hollywood smother her in ketchup, add ground beefcake, and insists it tastes the same?

Filed Under: Movies & TV, Oscar Race Tagged With: best actor, best actress, best picture, Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” Trailer

October 4, 2011 By Thelma 1 Comment

Is it just my paranoia, or has the girl become subordinated to the men? I think that’s my fear of the American version via Fincher:

Filed Under: Movies & TV Tagged With: Daniel Craig, David Fincher, Max von Sydow, Rooney Mara, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Scandinavian Mysteries: What Color is your Bummer?

November 6, 2010 By Thelma Leave a Comment

What snow is to the Eskimos, depression is to Scandinavian mystery writers. There are endless ways to describe it. I’ve long wanted to write an essay on the topic but, well, it bummed me out. So, here, then, is the first in a series of excerpts. This one from chapter two of Danish writer Leif Davidsen‘s political thriller Lime’s Photograph, narrated by fictional papparazzo Peter Lime.

“”As usual after an assignment, I felt rather empty and depressed. Not seriously, just a feeling of the blues, that something was over and with it the knowledge that, with the passing of that particular second, I had taken a step closer to death.”

I invite you to send me similar passages from Scandinavian mysteries, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series included. But, please, don’t download the entire PBS Mystery series Wallender.

Filed Under: Books Tagged With: Denmark, depression, Leif Davidsen, Lime's Photograph, pbs, Scandinavian mystery, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Wallender

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