More about Deb and Greg’s sex life.  Oh wait, let’s move on to something blacker, like an outstanding Goth slayer girl who got it goin on, Lisbeth Salander, the now-world famous main character in the Steig Larson trilogy.  http://www.stieglarsson.com/Millennium-series.  The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo book started a bit slow and then became a literary locomotive.  Couldn’t finish it fast enough.  The next installment, The Girl Who Played With Fire, set my eyes on fire from reading like lightening.  The third book, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, stung my brain all upside my head and around ,  tying up the plot line(s) irresistibly and insanely.  Then Greg and I saw all three Swedish movies and the first American movie installment. Shown above: Noomi Repace (l.) and Rooney Mara   portray Lisbeth  in the Swedish and American movie versions respectively.  Never read 3 books so quickly in my life.   And why?

First, the heroine was an utterly unlikely and in many ways unlikable:  A tiny, dark-haired and dark-minded young woman with some serious anti-social tendencies (with good reason) that didn’t want to be anybody’s role model.  Abused, neglected and forced early on to think fast on her feet on her own from a young age, she was a fascinating study.   No please and thank you ma’am kinda gal, she’d as soon tell you to fuck off as anything—if she decided to talk to you at all.  Even her sex life couldn’t be pigeon-holed.   Her appearance underscored her alienation:  Black leather, piercings and a famous dragon tattoo, Mohawk ‘do.  She got way under my skin, tapping my admiration.  She, whether she had had a choice or not, had broken out of the “preferred”  female behavior that had been enforced in me growing up in the ‘50s and early ‘60s with 3 sisters.  Don’t talk back, follow the rules, don’t make waves.  Arrrrgh.   She not only thumbs her tiny nose at all that, she wreaks some heavy revenge on her tormentors.  So delicious.  Which is why the Dragon books and movies are wildly popular.  Girls, woman, and men too wish for that freedom.  (Hopefully without having to endure the abuse for inspiration.)

Sweden:  A calm and peaceful country full of golden people. Equal treatment of the sexes.   Stayed under the Nazi radar during WWII because they were beatifically neutral.  Nifty, spare,  furniture.  Author Larson offers a peak inside Swedish society that blows many of these stereotypes wide open (except for the furniture—Ikea never sounded so good).  For starters, Larson (who died in 2004 at age 54 from a heart attack probably brought on by the same disgusting  habits of junk food and chainsmoking that his main character, Lisbeth Salander, possessed) titled the book “Men Who Hate Women”  but was encouraged to change the title  by his publisher for wider release outside Sweden.  Larson had witnessed a gang rape of a girl named Lisbeth when he was 15.  He never forgave himself for not intervening.  Each chapter of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo opens with another jarring statistic about domestic abuse in Sweden.    It turned out that relations between the genders in Sweden aren’t what they seem.  And Larson had an inside line, as he’d worked for a domestic abuse foundation as well as writing for a magazine about bigotry in Sweden. 

Moreover, I learned  that many Swedes were Nazis or Nazi sympathizers during WWII.   I was totally shocked.  This could explain why the country wasn’t invaded and destroyed. 

However the books—and the movies that followed—are also a fascinating travelogue of a gorgeous country, and beyond the negative aspects, an intimate view of Swedish social life that was satisfying.  So all in all a great experience, presenting a complex and inspiring character that this combustible time of breaking away and broken dreams deserves.