The Girl by any other Pen
Stieg Larsson’s beloved characters are safe and sound in David Lagercrantz’s hands
David Lagercrantz wrote The Girl in the Spider’s Web, the sequel to Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, in secret, on a computer disconnected from the Web. He got the contract after a clandestine meeting in the publisher’s basement in Stockholm, and all of a sudden, now, he’s No. 1 around the world, adjusting to life as a literary superstar.
“It’s more shocking than you can imagine,” says the 53-year-old Swedish writer, his lanky frame folded on a couch at a boutique Toronto hotel. “The day before the launch was absolutely crazy for me in Sweden.” Despite an abundance of international conflicts, he points out — the kind Larsson’s character, journalist Mikael Blomqvist, might have covered — Lagercrantz himself was headline news: “(When) I went to buy some groceries, I saw my face on the bloody broadsheet.”
Lagercrantz is hardly the first hired gun to take on a dead author’s famous series — this month alone, we’re seeing James Bond in Trigger Mortis, by Anthony Horowitz, and Sherlock Holmes in Mycroft Holmes, by none other than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — but he’s the only one to be vaulted to fame in the process. Larsson himself would have been a celebrity had he not succumbed to a heart attack in 2004, before his thrillers about Blomqvist and the tattooed super-genius Lisbeth Salander were published. Lagercrantz stands in for him not only on the page, but also for the fame-obsessed media.
Not everyone is impressed: Larsson’s longtime girlfriend, Eva Gabrielsson, has decried Lagercrantz’s appointment, telling Agence France-Presse, “It’s about a publishing house that needs money, (and) a writer who doesn’t have anything to write so he copies someone else.” She claims Larsson left an unfinished Millennium novel on his computer, but seeing as she and Larsson never married, Swedish law dictated that his closest relatives be appointed his estate’s executors, and his father and brother chose to forge on without Larsson’s posthumous input.
Lagercrantz says he hasn’t seen that manuscript. Even though he’s a literary chameleon — his previous books include the literary novel Fall of Man in Winslow, about code-breaker Alan Turing, and the ghostwritten autobiography of soccer maverick Zlatan Ibrahimovic, told in what he calls a “ghetto” style — he insists it would have been difficult to pick up directly where Larsson left off. What’s more, he felt impelled to continue Larsson’s practice of delving into contemporary themes: his book’s plot starts with Salander hacking into the NSA, just as the old-school Blomqvist is being sidelined by his magazine’s new owners for eschewing social media and writing in-depth investigative material rather than celebrity news.
A former crime reporter himself, Lagercrantz laments the ascendancy of “fast journalism” designed to be reactive, not reflective: “A sensitive piece that tries to understand a phenomenon won’t get many clicks, but an idiot who writes something vulgar and awful (will) — it worries me.” He recalls the firestorm of hot takes in Sweden that greeted the news that he would be taking up Larsson’s mantle. “It was terrifying,” he says. He was lambasted for being from “the wrong upbringing” (Lagercrantz comes from minor Swedish nobility, whereas Larsson was working-class), and for the very secrecy surrounding the book; ad hominem attacks assumed The Girl in the Spider’s Web would be dire. He smiles. “I’m getting better and better reviews, so I think I’m recovering.”
Certainly Lagercrantz’s writing, in its translation by George Goulding, offers a smoother ride than Larsson’s. He jettisons much of the expository ballast and seemingly irrelevant detail that weighs down his compatriot’s prose, although he does inherit Larsson’s journalistic desire to tell, not show. According to Lagercrantz, Larsson didn’t just aim to excite his readers; “he also wanted to educate people — and maybe sometimes he did too much, but when you read his books you learn something about society — I try to do that myself.”
More important is how he handles Salander, the character so compelling she transcends her source material; having dug herself out of a grave (in Larsson’s second novel, The Girl Who Played with Fire), she can credibly leap from book to book and author to author. Lagercrantz craftily pairs her with what he calls a “mirror figure,” an eightyear-old speechless savant and fellow math-wiz who becomes a target after he witnesses a crime. He was inspired by a real-life boy Lagercrantz wrote about in his journalistic days, whereas Salander’s own fleshed-out backstory owes much to Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Batman movies. At 4-foot-11 and 90 pounds, the surly Salander makes for an unlikely superhero, but now, along with her uncanny smarts and a handy ability to beat up people much bigger (seemingly by force of will), she has a more detailed troubled childhood — a superhero necessity that gives her license to kick ass.
The book is set in the present day, but Lagercrantz borrows a page from James Bond by ensuring his protagonists don’t age. “Superman is not 70,” he notes.” You should still keep Lisbeth Salander young. The time will change, but she will probably not.”
Salander does change those around her, including Lagercrantz himself, who seems equally enthusiastic and bewildered by the attention: “In one way you’re still the old insecure you, and suddenly you have this public persona that’s mixed up — it’s very strange. Sometimes you’re sitting in interviews all day; you do author appearances; you do signing; and your head is burning — ‘ What is really happening?’ ” His next literary move is unclear — there may be another sequel coming up, but at the moment, he looks forward to relaxing at home, having time “just to figure things out.” He’ll need to decide how best to use his powers, now that he’s the Guy with the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Lisbeth Salander is so compelling she transcends the source material