The online response to the publication of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has been extraordinary. I don't think I can remember a book in this genre prompting quite so much discussion before.
In the first instance what is striking is that the response is overwhelmingly positive. Although almost every review I have come across has pointed out some of the flaws in Stieg Larsson's books, the power, scope and humanity in the stories has overcome them.
Unsurprisingly, much of the attention has focused on the character of Lisbeth Salander, and less obviously, perhaps, on Larsson's inspiration.
No doubt many Swedes, and indeed many millions of others, will have spotted the hand of children's writer Astrid Lindgren in Salander. But as I have not read the Pippi Longstocking stories, either to myself or to my young children, I did not recognise Lindgren's famous fictional orphan in Sweden's new literary heroine.
So I find myself indebted to Dorte, writer of the impressively bi-lingual DJS Krimiblog, for pointing out the comparisons between Pippi and Lisbeth in an unusually long debate in the comments section of my review of The Girl Who Played With Fire. I will not rehash all of that, if you want to read it, you should go to DJS Krimiblog and get it there.
I had also planned to publish something of a round-up of the various excellent reviews of Fire that have been doing the rounds in recent weeks, but the ever alert Maxine of Petrona has already done it, and I highly recommend you take a look over there.
Maxine herself has contributed thoughtfully to the debate, reminding people that Salander's origins in childrens' stories, fascinating though it is, should not cause them to overlook the institutional sickness that allowed a child like Lisbeth Salander to be so appallingly abused within one of the world's most heralded social security nets. It is a point well made. As I wrote below, my own feeling is that the systems themselves are not "evil" but without vigilant oversight and care they are too easily exploited by evil people. Too often the good do not give anything like sufficient thought to how the bad might behave given the opportunity to do so. Perhaps they do not even have the imagination to be able to foresee the devious potential and destructiveness of such malevolence. Fire makes it clear that the consequences of this blindness, laziness and negligence can be catastrophic.
Fire has also been widely reviewed in the mainstream media, which for once has turned its attention to books people are actually reading rather than the usual obscuria. Among the more thoughtful are Mark Lawson in the Guardian (is it just me or does anyone else actually hear Lawson's so-familiar voice when they read this?) and Natasha Cooper, author of A Poisoned Mind in the FT.
Cooper makes the obvious link between Mikael Blomqvist and Larsson, himself a crusading, liberal reporter, but more interestingly draws a parallel between Salander and Kathy Mallory, Carol O'Connell's NY detective. On the face of it, there do appear to be similarities, but I would need to read O'Connell.
Cooper also makes a point made by many other reviewers, that maybe Larsson's sometimes unwieldy and untidy story might have been edited into something more polished if Larsson had lived longer.
Her concluding line, however, speaks I suspect for all of us: "If only there had been more time, not just for fine polishing but for more novels. Stieg Larsson was only 50 when he died."
Indeed. Personally I could do without the polishing, I think the rambling plots are part of the books' beauty. But I would certainly take more novels.
Before I read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, I wondered how much Larsson's premature death had contributed to the extraordinary success of his books and whether his own tragic tale (he did not live to see how popular his books became) had not been the primary cause of the hype, rather than his writing.
It did not take more than a few dozen pages of Dragon Tattoo to set me right of course. These are extraordinary books. And while his own story doubtless has had an impact on his sales and his legend - I am not sure there is any other word for it - the books speak for themselves.
The online debate shows that people really care about Larsson's work. And that is as uplifting as it is unusual.
