The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest picks up about two hours after the end of The Girl Who Played with Fire, which means that there was no long wind up—and if you’ve read the first two novels of the trilogy, you know exactly what I mean—to read before the actual story began. We begin right in the middle of the action. Much more so than the first two novels, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is an action novel, even when we enter the courtroom.

To me, the very best thing about the plot was that Stieg Larsson constructed everything so that a semi-intelligent reader can see how rape culture and the denigration of women is structurally ingrained into society. From Lisbeth Salander’s story to Erika Berger’s story to Monica Figuerola’s, we are shown a very realistic portrayal of how women are treated and how that treatment shapes everything in a woman’s life, including those things that she cannot control. It is a story that can easily be told about poor and non-White persons here in America. Very good lessons…but I’m sure most will miss them.

I also liked many of the characters who exist only in this installment of the trilogy. Evert Gullberg, Monica Figuerola, and Frederik Clinton were all very compelling. And even though we met him briefly in The Girl Who Played with Fire, we don’t really get to know Dr. Teleborian until this book. The courtroom scene with him on the stand is one of the best courtroom scenes I have ever read. For different reasons, Gullberg and Teleborian are two of the most chilling and creepy characters you will ever encounter.

Still, this is Lisbeth Salander’s story. Nothing Larsson did changed that. He was never going to take the story away from her. Ultimately, the entire Millennium trilogy is Lisbeth’s. It is her rising from unspeakable horror and finding both herself and her place in the world. One of the things that disappointed me about The Girl Who Played with Fire is that the Lisbeth in that book was not the same Lisbeth from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. After reading The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, however, I realize that it could not be the same Lisbeth. Too much has happened to her. She is a survivor, and survival means adapting. She had to change because her world changed. To keep her the same would have been disingenuous. I loved her story, and I love her. What a fascinating character.

By no means was this novel perfect, though. I was tired of the so-called Blomqvist charm by the middle of the previous installment. It was way over the top this time. Also, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest was a borderline A novel until the epilogue. The epilogue takes up a full 5% of a 590+ page novel. And all but one sentence of it was unnecessary. Those things that the epilogue did wrap up were, in my opinion, inconsequential. I thought they had already been solved implicitly.

But it was great. I loved it, and I highly recommend the entire series.

B+