A new book, The Girl In The Eagle’s Talons, written by Kristin Smirnoff (translated from Swedish by Sarah Death), which takes forward the hugely popular Lisbeth Salander franchise, has just been released.
In 2008, the first book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo written by Swedish journalist and author Steig Larsson (translated by Reg Keeland) came out and introduced to the world a never-seen-before heroine, Lisbeth Salander. Larsson had already written and submitted for publication two more novels in what came to be known as the Millennium Trilogy — The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. Lisbeth Salander became a leading light of the Scandi or Nordic Noir genre of crime fiction.
Larsson planned to write a series of 10 novels, but passed away at age 50 of a heart attack. Sadly, he did not live to see the international success of his books and the movies made on them, and missed the exploding base of Salander fandom. Readers were craving more books, so fellow Swede, David Lagercrantz, took on the challenge of using characters created by Larsson and continuing the franchise with three more books — The Girl in the Spider’s Web, The Girl Who Takes an Eye For an Eye and The Girl Who Lived Twice. He built on the adventures that Salander got embroiled in, and did a competent job, in spite of unflattering comparisons to Larsson. After the trilogy he opted out to work on his own novels, but Lisbeth Salander, the crime-fighting vigilante with a strong moral code, could not be allowed to fade away.
A second writer, Kristin Smirnoff, was assigned the next trilogy and the first in the series is out. Smirnoff has taken the story into a different direction, keeping the current preoccupation with climate change in mind. She has retained the character of investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist— the only man Salander truly loved and was disappointed by— and has introduced Svala Hirak, a Greta Thunberg-like teenager, who is the niece Salander never knew she had. She is reluctantly forced to take charge of the precocious 13-year-old, when her mother goes missing and her grandmother dies. Like Salander, Svala is also a genius with numbers and has a photographic memory. She has inherited from her dead father, Ronald Niedermann (Salander’s half brother), her strange white hair and a medical condition that makes her impervious to pain. Svala has obviously been created to add some freshness to the series and possibly replace Salander at some point in the future. Salander does not even appear in the book till Chapter 13, but her presence hovers over the pages and her entry is keenly awaited.
When Lisbeth Salander first burst on to the scene, dressed in black, with tattoos and piercings, she was an expert at martial arts, a world class hacker, who went by the name of Wasp on the net — a woman who had every reason to be furious with the system that failed her. She had a marked contempt for sentimentality and permanence (she has brief flings with people of both sexes). One of her girlfriends rightly calls her “entropic chaos factor.” Unlike other avenging angel heroines who were written to pander to the male gaze, Salander’s androgyny was a trail blazer. That’s why readers were annoyed when in one of the novels, she had a boob job.
It emerges through the books that her childhood, with a battered mother, gangster father, and evil twin sister, was nightmarish. She was viciously abused by her guardian and she avenged all the torture she was made to endure. As the novels progress, all her immediate family are killed— some by her hand. She is loyal to the few people she cares about, like an undeserving Blomkvist, and comes flying out like an angry tigress if a woman or child is in trouble. She lets nothing defeat her, or come in the way of the life she has made for herself. In the latest book, Blomkvist describes her as a “crazy, wonderful, peculiar person”, which is just about right.
Lisbeth Salander invariably became a subject of academic research and debate over whether she could be picked as a feminist icon. Judith Lorber writes in dissentmagazine.com. “Why is she (Salander) so interesting? I think that it’s her gender ambiguity that pulls in different readers, women and men, young and old. I don’t mean an androgyny of masculine and feminine traits, but a mix of attributes within her identity as a woman. She is both victim and avenger, abused child and iconoclastic rebel, punky teen in appearance and competent woman in behaviour… Feminists might best describe Salander as a third-waver. She often decides how she will look for shock value— punk clothes, piercings, tattoos, bizarrely cut and dyed hair. She has bisexual relationships, sex with friends in non-exclusive relationships, recreational sex. As in third-wave “girlie culture”, she revels in sexual openness, outrageous gender self-presentations, and emotional coolness. But Salander never identifies as a feminist, nor does she use her (criminally acquired) wealth or her computer skills for any institutionalised activism.”
Smirnoff is the first female writer to work on Salander books, and she saddles her with a child, the easiest way for women’s independence to be curbed — even though Svala is a mini-Lisbeth and doesn’t need any babysitting. According to Ella Creamer’s piece in The Guardian, “Smirnoff believes Salander was like a teenager in the first six books, and that it was time for her to grow up. Though she toyed with the idea of giving her a child or a dog, she eventually settled on the genius niece, an important character who will feature in the eighth and ninth books, which Smirnoff has also been commissioned to write.”
Smirnoff’s first book has disappointed readers — not enough Lisbeth Salander in it! Surprisingly, it’s a woman who disapproves of Salander’s anarchic, lone-wolf existence. Smirnoff also makes her moon over a redhead policewoman with “Barbie legs.” Mercifully, her domestication is limited to buying clothes and a computer for Svala and ordering pizza. The day Salander enters the kitchen to make soup and pie will be the end of her and the franchise. No offence to moms (or aunts) who cook and nurture, but Salander is the kind of woman who says, “I like new problems, they keep the old ones at bay.” Her nonconformity is her superpower!
(Deepa Gahlot is a Mumbai-based columnist, critic and author)
