Reading Millennium Trilogy

Reading Millennium trilogy has made me curious about the idea of writing compelling stories in simple way, and I am talking about a translated work. The story can start from anywhere, at least that’s what I think, and can go on to add characters, plot, progression of the plot, development (sometimes lack of it) of characters, not necessarily in this order, and dialogues or should I say words spoken by the characters. Lucidity is a problem. That and the ability of the writer to hold a reader’s attention for as long as the book lasts. Steig  Larson does all these in his three books. Published posthumously, Millennium trilogy has made him a writer who ought to have lived a few years more, of course to write some more stuff but also to enjoy the money and fame that has followed since his demise.

The Girl With Dragon Tattoo, the first of the trilogy, is a complete book in itself if we can ignore the background of Lisbeth Salander. Lisbeth is unique. There are few women characters in Literature who precede her. Her complexity as a human being may remain as the most important achievement of Larson. She is quite frankly anti-social, introvert, has freakish memory and a computer-nerd – one of the eight citizens of hacker republic – she is above all a survivor. She may have memory of an elephant; she weighs 40 kg and is light on her feet like a butterfly. The suffering that she has experienced as 12-year old can break any normal person; she stays sane all through but refuses to acknowledge the civilized world’s definition of this word. She works outside the society, but not outside the morality.

Larson’s books have many women characters – well-dressed, self confident, intelligent and sexually liberated (whatever that means). The trouble is women in the novels are never mean, they may have tough opinions about things but at no stage do they come across as evil. I can only explain this as Larson’s artful subtlety to project himself as the male protagonist of the trilogy Mickel Blomkovist.

Mickel, the quintessential hero, is a scrupulous journalist, an uncompromising honest person. Mickel makes light of all his qualities – good and bad. There are not too many bad things in him though, if you trust the women. Women find him sexually attractive and someone who lets a woman be and does not bother her with unbecoming emotions. Mickel too expects the same. Naturally he is good between the sheets. Even Salander is impressed and is surprised to fall in love with him.

In story and scope of the conspiracy that the trilogy unfolds Larson stands tall. The Girl with Dragon Tattoo untangles a conspiracy that involves a rich family and its diabolic secrets – pro-Nazi people, misogynists, rapists, murderer and incest. The simple story to find a girl who has been missing from last 25 years leads Mickel and Salander into the dark heart of the Swedish society. This darkness is more visible as we go into second and third books. Along with finding the missing girl they manage to strip some corrupt businessmen hand in glove with the government.

The girl who played with fire – second of the trilogy – is more about Salander than anybody else. The past that Lisbeth cannot forget, confronts her and pushes her into the labyrinth leaving us breathless with excitement. As we appropriate her story and descend into her past and worry about her present we grow restless, much like Mickel. No surprise Larson has become such a sensation.

The girl who kicked hornet’s nest – the final part – culminates into a disturbing tale about human suffering added and abetted by ‘civilized society’, a democratic government, popular media, paranoid policemen and paedophilic doctors. Lisbeth, by no means a secondary character in this part, becomes the epicenter of the storm that blows the lead off a can of worms. Larson questions the very fabric of the sanguine Swedish society; Mickel becomes the flag-bearer and Mickel being Mickel ropes in the very system to assist him that he threatens to expose.

There is no dead end in the trilogy. Sadly every tale has to end. Larson died before he could see his published works. How I wish could write the fourth book, if only I had Larson’s lucidity.