Young Lisbeth Salander is beautiful, damaged, brilliant, socially awkward. I love her. She may be a mere invention, a sylph, a flawed yet idealized projection of cruelly interrupted womanhood, but her presence forces its way from the pages of Stieg Larsson's "Millenium Series", like a soul searching for corporeal station. As a grown woman, I wish to hold her (she would hate that), comfort her (she would snarl at the thought of needing comfort), remind her how remarkable she is (she would stare blankly and suspect cheap flattery), and cook her a nice, hot, fatty meal (this she would devour while chain smoking). If I were a teenager, she would be my heroine, my role model. She is one of the most well-developed, fascinating, and sympathetic characters in all of modern fiction.
Lisbeth is a character so appealing, so powerful, that she all but carries what many consider a slightly above par piece of fiction. The Millenium Series is an undeniably addictive trilogy (abruptly cut short by the untimely death of author Stieg Larsson). I voraciously devoured all three books during my first three months here in Budapest, momentarily put off by Larsson's sometimes awkward writing style, contrived dialogue, and tendency toward pages of seemingly pointless details (he describes every piece of IKEA furniture that Lisbeth purchases, in some chapters, everything she eats).
The hook is Salander herself. She stands out among the book's many characters not just because she is humbly yet frighteningly exceptional and complicated, but because most of the others are not. Many of the other women in the novels seem to be to be little more than alpha-female feminist fantasies, overachieving bores despite their active sex lives and high powered careers. Not that they are unlikeable....indeed Erika Berger, editor of Millenium, the magazine which gives the series its name, is exactly the kind of woman I would want to work for: smart, thoughtful but decisive, a woman who recognizes the strengths in her employees and uses them to her magazine's ultimate advantage. She just seems much too perfect and her life, which includes a devoted, bisexual husband who accepts her decades long affair with the story's lead protagonist, Mikael Blomkvist, seems like a contrived fantasy. The other female characters, except Salander, seem like similar spin-offs of Berger, with slighty different names and circumstances.
Stieg Larsson loved women....not just sexually, but he was also enchanted by them as fellow human beings. When he was alive, he identified as a feminist and often wrote about the fate of women suffering under oppressively patriarchal societies. Therefore his books, the first of which was originally titled Men Who Hate Women, portray women with a kind of amazonian sheen, (with the exception of one or two bitchy, needy, minor characters) without much depth, seemingly unwilling to delve into what makes them human, flaws and all.
Salander is the exception. She skulks her way through the streets of Stockholm like a little black cloud, a lovably toxic imp, an arresting but tiny package of lethal and heartbreaking surprises. The reader follows her, almost like a voyeur, through her life, her jobs, her harrowing experiences. She is the reason we put up with the noble yet slightly selfish obsessions of Blomkvist, the dithering, enlightened yuppie concerns of Berger, and the cold, maddening ignorance of much of the Stockholm police force (there are a couple of exceptions to this criticism, of course). The reader finds he or she needs to know what becomes of Salander and wants to understand why she is the way she is.
Aside from my love for Lisbeth, reading The Millenium Series taught me a smidgen about honest human relations. All of the "good" characters in the books are refreshingly honest with each other, about their abilities and emotions (which is probably why much of it seems so unrealistic). I love that Berger knows she's a shitty writer and happily relies on Blomkvist's journalistic talent. I respect the fact that Berger and Blomkvist genuinely like each other, sometimes fuck like rabbits, and yet admit to not being in love with each other. I like the clarity with which Blomkvist enters his sexual dalliances, which, again, makes the stories all to unrealistic on a human level. The personal relationships are highly idealized...but that doesn't mean we should not strive to emulate them, right? They make me want to be more honest with myself and with those I love, about myself and about other people. That is one tall order, I tell you.
These reasons alone are enough to begin, fall in love with, and finish "The Millenium Series." This is one massively popular bandwagon I'm so glad I hitched my side-cart to. Blessings to St. Stieg and his delightful, deceptively powerful, earth bound demon, the girl with the dragon tattoo. x
