…or the nearly dead. That is a common and worn out ploy used in many movies and TV shows–the person who is suspected dead suddenly rising up and ready for another round of battle. It is generally so contrived and so expected, and generally so silly and unbelievable, that it is a wonder why this gimmick is still so widely employed.
Well, today Dr. Jollywood is going to visit something similar that was employed in a book. Yes, a novel that was meant to be “real world” as opposed to sci-fi or fantasy. Although, reading this book, you have to wonder what reality the author was living in.
I feel a little bad about criticizing the book because the author is deceased, and died before any of the 3 novels of his trilogy were published. I’m talking about Steig Larsson, the wunderkind Swedish journalist and editor, who wrote three books and started a 4th before he finally sent them to a publisher.
He died suddenly of a heart attack, or so its said. There is a bit of controversy about his death, as he was a bit of a socialist militant, undoubtedly made many enemies, and his death was rather sudden.
At any rate, it was because of his obvious intellect, intelligence, education, and ability to do research that I was so astoundingly horrified by his second books, The Girl Who Played With Fire. No, I am not going to put in the link to Amazon–I refuse to perpetuate awful books that somehow make it to bestseller lists.
As a caveat, I enjoyed the first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and was thrilled that he had written 2 more books before he died. But Fire was as if a different person had written, one who was too ignorant even to figure out that during flood conditions, people do not go and hide in basements (yes, there is a mind numbing chapter, the first, of a hurricane scenario on a tropical island–I should have stopped reading then).
The book plodded along at a frightening slow pace, filled with cartoonish one sided characters, shopping lists of what characters purchased at the local 7-11 (Billy’s Pan Pizza is a favorite), a dull plot, and one of the most moronic endings in the history of publishing. Can you tell how much I enjoyed this?
But it is obvious that the author got so caught up in his own agenda, that he neglected the idea of doing the simplest bit of research, or using basic common sense or his own life experiences (Steig, ever got an injection? More on that). The ignorance is most apparent in his rendition of human physiology and healthcare settings, police investigations, and weather.
Even though I’m starting to get carried away, I will climb down from the soap box and concentrate on what Dr. Jollywood does best–pointing out the faux pas and idiocies in the media, as it relates to health and medicine.
The Girl Ignored
The first medical idiocy is Larsson’s rendition of life in a psychiatric hospital. The protagonist, Lisbeth Salander, is a violent, non-communicative, and maladapted girl of 12. Now, do you think that this person is a candidate for oral medicine? Well, Larsson thinks so. In this story, they try to force pills into Lisbeth, undoubtedly to treat her psychotic and dangerous behavior (she just set a person on fire). Lisbeth makes herself throw up. The old hand down the throat and gag routine.
Next, the profoundly stupid doctors tie down her hands when they force pills down her, but Lisbeth outsmarts them and learns to make herself throw up without physically gagging herself. Of course, Larsson doesn’t explain what happened in the interim–between the time that they were forcing pills down her and when she learned to do insta-puke without her hands. I mean, surely the drugs would have kicked in and subdued her?
But at any rate, since Lisbeth has become so adept at throwing up her drugs, they just decide to stop giving them to her. Now I wanted to puke after reading this. Um, I guess that Larsson has never heard of injections? I realize that the man was no longer alive when the book was making its way through the publishing mill, but couldn’t a good editor intervene and redo this section?
Crazy psychos are given injections. Especially crazy psychos who set people on fire. Even if they did try to put her on oral meds, one attempt at gagging, and she’d be back to shots. Plain and simple. The stupidity of this scenario should offend anyone working in healthcare, but let’s move on.
In the psych hospital, Lisbeth refuses to talk to any of the doctors, who are of course, all male. She does however, speak to the nurses and everyone else. But in Larsson’s reality, nurses do not speak to doctors either, so no one really knows what’s bugging Lisbeth and thus, they can’t give her treatment.
I suppose that it never occurred to Larsson, who seems to harbor a hatred towards straight white men even though he was one himself, that nurses do confer with physicians and discuss patients. And that a trained psychiatric nurse could conduct therapy with Lisbeth, although I guess Larsson assumes that nurses only fluff pillows and wipe boo-boos. Also, a female doctor? Did that ever occur to him?
The whole segment of Lisbeth’s hospitalization was so pathetic, so poorly written, and so bogus and unbelievable (other plot lines fit into this that were ridiculous), I just fast forwarded out of there and moved on. And you will see, if you happen to have the misfortune of picking up this book, that you can skip multitudes of pages at a time, and not miss a thing.
Return from the Dead
Now, if the psych hospital scenario was bad, wait until you read about Lisbeth’s encounter with bullets. Yes, she is truly Wonder Woman, a superhero about to reveal herself….
At the end of the book, Lisbeth is shot 3 times. Unfortunately, you know that she can’t be dead because she reappears in the third book. But she is shot in the shoulder, the hip and the head. By the author’s own admission, the bullet penetrates the brain and causes “massive trauma.” I guess that was something he saw in a book or heard on TV, because he is obviously unaware of what massive brain trauma is, or what happens when a person is shot in the head. And apparently, way too lazy to spend 10 minutes on the Internet looking it up.
Lisbeth’s assailants assume that she is dead, as most people would be after 3 bullets and one to the brain. But being stupid white straight men, they don’t bother to check for a pulse, and bury her alive. Now, theoretically she should suffocate quickly, being comatose and suffering from blood loss.
But wait, Lisbeth is awake. And coherent. And isn’t losing any blood at all from wounds. Amazing! If a bullet to the head doesn’t kill you outright, you’re generally in a coma or at the very least, extremely non-responsive. But not Lisbeth. She begins to dig her way out, using one arm because of her gunshot to the other side. I supposed that Larsson meant for us to get up and cheer.
Then, after miraculously digging her way out, she gets to her feet and begins to walk. With a gunshot to the hip, she is able to walk a very long distance back to the house where her assailants are. Her thoughts are crystal clear, she is completely coherent, and just complains of a “pain in her head.”
And then, Lisbeth not only arrives back at the house, but takes on her 2 assailants–both grown and skilled men–and wins! She is only 4 foot 11 inches, weighs 90 pounds, but no sweat. No blood loss, no trouble walking, no trouble fighting. All this with a bullet in the hip and shoulder, and massive trauma to the brain. And then, Lisbeth realizing that she needs help in getting back to the city, whips out her cell phone and calls for help—to a straight white man that she hates for psychotic reasons all her own, even though he has only been kind and respectful to her. But Lisbeth allows him to have the honor of coming to fetch her.
Now I expect that in book 3, Lisbeth will don a cape and be able to fly faster than a locomotive, catch bullets in her teeth and bounce them off her skin….
Anyway, this book will set a new precedence in the annals of neurosurgery. And it must make the list of the 10 worst endings of all time.
