The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson: About the Book

The Girl Who Played with Fire written by Stieg Larsson
649 pages
Stars Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyquist
Directed by Daniel Alfredson
Released 2010

About the Book:
Wow! Wow! Wow! I've just spent the last couple of days absolutely immersed in number two of the Millenium trilogy; The Girl Who Played with Fire. My husband dragged me away from it to see the latest Sherlock Holmes movie last night - Game of Shadows which Noomi Rapace was in, along with stars Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr and a stunningly brief appearance by Rachel McAdams. Not great but certainly entertaining enough, and I've taken time out to do some laundry and eat but besides that I've been pretty much glued to the page. Or should I say pages. All 649 of them. I think the sheer length of the book - it's daunting heft - kept me from reading it before. Who has time to read such a loooooong book?! How long will it take?? Trust me, make the time and it will fly by. Take this coming weekend for example. Forget going to yet another boring New Year's Eve party and ring the New Year in with Blomkvist and Salander instead.
This is an incredibly exciting read - more so in many ways that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. One of the things I loved most about it is that quite a bit of it takes place in Stockholm; it's great fun to get a sense of the city and I look forward to seeing it on film. 

Isn't that one of the reasons to read they always put on those posters - READING TAKES YOU PLACES. This book sure took me places.

Another thing I absolutely loved - the amazing cast of characters. We get to see Libeth in a whole new light. We see more of wonderful Armansky and Palmgren, Nils Bastard Bierman- her horrible guardian - more of Erika Berger, the Millennium editor and of course more of Mikael Bloody Blomkvist. Then there is a dizzying array of all new characters, good guys and bad guys - I mean, really, really bad guys -  and I won't even go into who's who because it is just so much fun to go along for the ride!
Having read the book, I will look forward to seeing David Fincher's version of it which should come out in a couple of years. A couple of years?? That's IF he decides to do it - he's said Book 2 and Book3 are basically two parts of one entire book and if he does direct, he'll shoot them back to back. Regardless, that's way toooo long to wait so I'll be watching the Swedish language version in the meantime. Interesting that Neils Arden Oplev is not back to direct, instead it's Daniel Alfredson who also directs the final film in the trilogy, The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. AND he is brother to Tomas Alfredson, who you may remember, just directed Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  It's a teeny tiny world when you come right down to it!