I had been looking forward to reading this one: it's a best seller, was made into 2 movies (one swedish, one american), and - because it's a trilogy - the buzz is still going strong.

while reading it, i admit i was carried along - good story telling (interrupted by some odd, almost catalogue-like descriptions of products in there) and yet, always, there was this sense of unease...

the chapters open with stats about violence against women in sweden - it's a foreshadow of violence to come of course, but as the novel progressed, i started to doubt the author's intention in using these stats. what initially appears as an indictment against such violence, soon feels like an instruction manual. the author even has a character that catalogues which types of behavior he can inflicit on which types of women.

finally, the pivotal rape scene (which i hear is quite graphic in both movies) is positioned in between a passage of 2 other characters having consentual sex... does this mean the author sees both sexual acts as equal? (no one can ask him these hard questions as he died shortly after he handed in his 3 novels)

at the end of the book, there's a teaser for the 2nd novel. i only skimmed it, as by this time i was feeling rather disgusted in this man's success in feigning his feminism. basically, the opener is a captive and bound twelve year old being sexually assaulted repeatedly. so now the author has widened his scope of misogyny to children.