The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Reading the first half of Larsson’s wildly popular The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is like watching an intricate pattern of dominos being meticulously arranged, revealing just why the audience generally waits until the dominos are in place to fall before showing up. But once Larsson has all his pieces in place, the second half of the The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo rushes to its conclusion, transforming the quality of time during the reader’s encounter in a spirited fashion similar to the suspension of time that occurs as dominos fall. With dominos it is as if the total sum of energy is deposited into each little black and white piece over the course of countless hours of labor, and that all of this energy is released, thereby transforming time, in the few seconds it takes for the dominos to fall, which release makes watching Dominos fall a direct encounter with our malleable universe. Maybe we would appreciate the transformational impact of falling dominos if we were there to see them laboriously arranged. Or we might just be bored until the fun started, which is exactly what I was until Larsson pushed over the first domino in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.