The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest - Stieg Larsson
Looking at the visitor stats for my other blog, Artsy Does It (on Wordpress - go look!) I noticed that one of the most popular search terms leading people to the blog was “What happened after The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest?” The short answer is, of course, “who cares?!” Everything is wrapped up fairly neatly at the end of the third and, may I emphasise, FINAL installment of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium TRILOGY. Of course, it doesn’t take a huge stretch of the imagination to start putting together further novels centred around the tenuously contrived adventures of Blomkvist and Salander, but that doesn’t mean it should be done. I have mentioned previously that Larsson’s partner, who, since Larsson died without leaving a will, received nothing of his estate or the profits of his success, has made plans to finish a supposed fourth Millennium manuscript that Larsson was apparently working on before his death, and that I stand very much opposed to it. What if she completely butchers and ruins what Larsson did? A trilogy is about as much of this sort of formulaic fiction as anyone can reasonably be expected to bear. Taking it further and developing the trilogy into a never-ending saga may result in scraping the barrell and destroying the success of the initial installments; surely preserving Larsson’s memory and writing as something successful is the most important thing here. Literary integrity is hard to come by in a world flooded with fiction by the likes of Katie Price (who is still Jordan whatever which way you look at it) and Coleen Nolan, and Stieg Larsson is lucky enough to have some for now. Why destroy that? Why? WHY?!
That said, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest was my least favourite of the three Millennium novels. I’m not sure if the length of the novel is a coincidence in respect to this or not. For The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest is very, very long. 700-odd pages of long and not without its narrative problems.
My main issue in Larsson’s writing is his difficulty to maintain the right balance between pace and tension in his narratives. I have definitely talked about this in my review of The Girl Who Played With Fire, and perhaps also The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. The final installment is no exception to this. Larsson spends enormous amounts of time on characters who, really, aren’t of much relevance to the plot, describing their personal and career histories at length just, it seems, to show off his knowledge of the history and development of roles within the Swedish national security system over the course of the last half-century or so. In doing this, he neglects other, potentially interesting aspects of the plot that are vastly downplayed and winds up with a plot that overall crawls from start to finish, with only the occasional but incredible acceleration as something vital is revealed, or a scene of important action unfolds.
The subplot around Berger’s stalker could have been made into something far more dramatic than it was and strung out for considerably longer, and the epilogue concerning Niedermann ought to have been better integrated into the main body of the novel instead of tagged on as an afterthought. In short, I suppose Larsson should have been more of a tease in his writing, giving the reader the odd paragraph here and there depicting Niedermann’s movements in his attempts to evade the police, or the stalker’s hateful opinion of Berger. Larsson could have done some really creepy things describing the stalker walking through Berger’s house, taking her personal (and secret) belongings in order to ruin her. But he didn’t and the novel is what it is.
However, while Larsson over-characterises some of the minor characters, he also develops some of his main characters quite well. Most of the Millennium staff remain a complete mystery, but Erika Berger’s character is developed such that she appears rounded and believeable as a real human being, which is more than I can say for the caricature-like characterisation of the other main players in the novel. I was very glad that Berger’s subplot wasn’t too intrisically bound up in the rest of the main storyline and found the narration of Berger’s problems with the stalker a refreshing break from the rest of the action. As I say, though, I wish it’d been strung out longer to generate more tension.
The other problem was that the ending was all rather predictable. Falsely accused criminal acquitted, womaniser reformed, tensions between falsely accused criminal and womaniser resolved into some kind of friendship, overall equilibrium restored. There’s no doubt that there was no other way to end the story in a satisfactory manner; to not acquit Salander, or for the tensions between her and Blomkvist to remain would be incredibly annoying for the reader, and definitely WOULD leave the narrative open to further sequels. And nothing could possibly be worse than further sequels.
I am glad that I have finished with the Millennium trilogy. I enjoyed them, yes, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say they’ve made a crime fiction convert out of me. I read them to try something new and see what all the fuss was about. After I read article upon article slating the novels, I kind of wanted to like them even more, just to prove the journalists who esteem themselves on being conoisseurs of “high literature” wrong. But unfortunately they were right. Genre fiction is evidently the literary food of the masses; it has universal appeal and can generate quite a stir in discussion, but apparently not for the right reasons. My literary loyalties therefore lie more on the side of the unsung heroes of writing, and not with the likes of Larsson.
