This is the sequel to the article I wrote on book one a couple of years ago. I’m not sure I can write as well as I did that day, but I’ll give it a go. I read The Girl Who Played with Fire closely followed by The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest and here are some thoughts.
I’m told there were originally supposed to be five parts in this trilogy but the author died shortly after delivering the first three books. I haven’t done the research to see if Larsson had written any notes for books 4 and 5, but I hope he did because books 4 and 5 are on the market written by a different author. I’m conflicted about reading them. Larsson did such a good job on the first three books I’m not sure I want to read the last two to find out if they’re of such a good standard.
Both of these books are just as good as the first. They suffered only a little from having a gap of a couple of years between the first and the second. I remembered the bigger picture but not the details. Some of the details were mentioned in later books and that sparked some memories.
The writing is just as good. Things I noticed this time include the vast amounts of details we were given. It would be possible to shorten the books by leaving out some of the mind-numbing details but they wouldn’t be the same books. When we’re given details of what Salander buys to furnish her new flat, or what she puts in her new fridge, we’re shown a great deal about her character. She is detail oriented, and that shows us that we can trust her testimony.
At one stage she buys an apartment. We’re not told what size it is but some of the things she buys and notices about it indicates that it might be a two-bedroom place. But then when Blomkvist goes into it we see a totally different picture of it. What I’m suggesting is that in order to see the entirety of this book you need to pay attention to both viewpoints. They are very different characters and what they notice about each other is really quite interesting.
I’ll be using both of these books for the Dymocks Reading Challenge 2021. One for ‘A book with ‘girl’ in the title’ and the other for ‘A book with 5+ words in the title’. But when I run by eyes through the categories I realise I could use them for several other categories. If I were in the habit of using one book for multiple categories I could tick off about six categories at once.
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