The Girl Who Played With Fire - Stieg Larsson

Apologies if this turns into a bit of a ramble. I feel slightly out of my depth having this as one of the first books I talk about after having a few weeks off. But I've got to start somewhere.

Before I wrote about this book I looked back at my (not review) of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - which was quite short and sweet. I think this post maybe slightly longer. It picks up a few months after The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the main story begins with Lisbeth on the island of Grenada. What she doesn't realise is that whilst she's away her enemies are organising themselves and pretty soon she's going to find herself wanted for a murder that she didn't commit.

Again with it being such a popular book it's just some of my ideas after finishing it. Like the first book in the Millennium Trilogy I found it pretty compulsive reading once I got past the prologue. (I think if I hadn't read the first book I wouldn't have bothered with this one. I thought the prologue was gratuitous. And again I found the misogyny to be not pleasant reading. I'm not sure whether I'd buy these books (I've been lent these copies by a friend). Having said that, I do think the both books 1 and 2 are probably very re-readable. If only to appreciate on a second read through how everything is so intricately connected together.

One of my favourite things about this book (at least the first part anyway) was how Lisbeth developed a fascination with mathematics. I thought this was a very interesting aspect of her character which allowed us to get more inside her head and see how she thought things through. This fell by the wayside a little when she got back to Sweden and the murder part of the storyline took over. And I still don't get what her realisation about Fermat's theorem was towards the end of the book - which is a little frustrating.

I think especially in the beginning of the book, when Salander is off the page I find my attention wandering slightly, but it's very interesting to see how the various unconnected strands start to work their way together. That's one of the things I've come to appreciate in watching Scandinavian television (thank you BBC).

Favourite quote:-

But she wished she had had the guts to go up to him and say hello. Or possibly break off his legs, she wasn't sure which.

I think she is without doubt one of the most striking female characters to emerge in a long time. How strong she is, how rigid, but also how vulnerable.

I don't think I'll be reading Book 3 for a while. I need a bit of a break and a change of genre but I definitely want to see how it all ends up.