The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Wow. It's been a long while since I've read a thriller that really distracted my from life. This one did. It's the first of a trilogy written by a Swedish chap, Stieg Larsson, (Steeg Lar-shon) who, poor bloke, wrote the books and then died of a heart attack before they were published. He was only 49, not much older than I am. (Well, okay, I give in. Quite a bit older - years even)

This one went on to become a best seller and his family are apparently squabbling over the incoming fortunes, as we tend to do as humans.

Nevertheless, this book was completely wonderful - if you are into thrillers.

I heard a lot about it, ordered it and started reading. For about twenty pages, I was almost asleep, wondering if this was yet another book millions had thought magical, except me. But a couple of pages later, I was enthralled.

Quickly, bedtime got earlier and earlier and it was one of those books I didn't want to end. The language is superb and the character developments are beautifully done. The suspense is fingernail stuff and the plot really engages you and compels you to read on and on.

I really loved every character - and there are quite a number of them, each described beautifully. Of course, you can't help but fall in love with Salander.

I just keep thinking what a shame he died. And, once the next two books are published and I read them, what will I do?

I regret two things about reading it. First that it ended and secondly that I didn't read it during Hygge season.

'Aussie' in the news in Sweden

This is one of those weird immigration cases, where a guy called Stefan Nystrom was born in Sweden when his mother, an Australian resident, was back in Sweden visting her family.

Unfortunately for Stefan, neither his mother, nor later him, bothered to think about him becoming and Australian citizen. Consequently, he grew up in Australia feeling, I should think, very much Australian.

Even more unfortunate for everyone concerned, including Australian society by the sound of it, is Stefan became a very bad boy getting into all sorts of mischief including aggravated rape at the grand old age of ten and armed robbery at eleven. To be fair, most of his misdemeanours, of which there seems to be many, were committed prior to his turning 18.

Due to some tiny technicality – not ever acquiring Australian citizenship – he was not so long ago shipped back ‘home’ to Sweden.

He ain’t happy about it.

While I can’t imagine he’s the nicest sort of guy you could meet, maybe he’s changed his ways and I’ve no doubt his aging mother loves him and it must be awful for her. In any case, he’s stuck in Denmark’s northern neighbour (which he refers to as a ‘Hitler country’) for the time being och han pratar bara ‘engelsk’.

What I did have a laugh at, was his quotes in the article of The Local, Sweden’s online newspaper in English. I won’t quote his tirade in its entirety because The Local might sue me and I’ll be shipped back to Australia, but I do love this very Australian conclusion:

"My mum's an old woman. She's dying and I'm over here in a cold, piece of shit country. It's killing me. I don't want to be here. I'm over it."

You can read the whole article at:

The Local