Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Much later. After such insistence on preserving my idea of my father, my memory of our last meeting, this happened a couple of Fridays ago. I opened up some photos taken by my brother and there my father is, dead in his coffin. I must confess to being quite distressed. And I still don't understand why on earth is this something to preserve? I don't get it one little bit.


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Hooked. Totally, completely, utterly hooked. I read this book yesterday during lunch even though I was with two perfectly nice interesting people.

And then today. Today we cremated my father without any ceremony, but first there was what they call a ‘viewing�. I so didn’t want to do that and still have absolutely no comprehension whatsoever as to why one would want to look at a dead body. So while the others did their dead body thing I sat in the lounge area with my nose buried in Stieg. And, although, it would not be true in the least to say I didn’t go next door to look at my dead father because I couldn’t put the book down, the fact is that people kept coming in to talk to me, like…I don’t know exactly�.but maybe like they thought that this would create some link between me and whatever was happening next door, like maybe they were worried I’d feel left out and what I wanted to say to them was ‘Can’t you see I’m reading?� ‘If I miss you all, honestly, I’ll drop by next door, I will, really.� I didn’t, doubtless you will be relieved to hear. Instead I chatted amiably to whoever wanted to interrupt me. But. I so wanted to say ‘go away�.

And there I find myself having to put my book down for a bit to talk to my aunt, thinking why do I have to do this, my aunt probably doesn’t even like me. My mother has two sisters, one’s a nun, and hence she’s an absolute trooper, but the other one seems a little fragile to me in some way that I can’t connect to. And I know it is all my dead father’s fault. I almost went next door to remind him of that. It was like this.

We’d been separated for many years from both sides of my family, but as a grownup I did start seeing just these two sisters again now and then. The first time my aunt Rosemary was with a bunch of nuns including my other aunt. Paul introduced me to them ‘This is Cathy, my eldest, she is a divorcee who plays cards for her living.� All true, if you want to put it like that. My father said it with great relish and satisfaction, I might add. Not with a long mournful face, shaking his head. Not like, what am I doing to do with her? More like he’d just bought a red car and didn’t everybody know they go faster? He loved shocking people. But I do think the only person who might have been the least bit shocked is Rosemary. And ever since when I see her, I feel like she looks at me in some slightly dubious way. Like I’m a riverboat gambler. Or a scarlet woman; that it follows in some way from being a divorcee who gambles that one is a certain colour as well.

And the thing about scarlet is that it is one of those colours that is bigger than others. I was wearing a black party dress today with just the tiniest bit of scarlet on it, but it feels like more. It’s a colour that stands out. In the literal definition of the word I’ve never been a scarlet woman, but I have certainly done things for money in my life that don’t feel much different. There too, it’s a bit like the dress. A little bit of scarlet goes a long, long way.



There is a most earnest statistical analysis of this book that will come later on the weekend when I’ve finished. It’s about breasts and punctuation and honestly, it will be a serious, weighty contribution to the understanding and critical analysis of this book.


Update. To keep you interested while I'm still preparing my groundbreaking statistical analysis.

Oh. Reading Paul’s comment I’m thinking okay, I need to put a bit more about this book here. So.

I happened to recall, earlier today, a conversation I had twenty years ago when I was living in Sydney. The phone rang and it was an acquaintance, John. A bit of chitchat and he says ‘Remember you said how much you were into mangoes.� DidI? I was slightly taken aback. ‘Yeah, yeah. Last time I saw you, you were talking about them.� I cast my mind back. It was a Victory Dinner after a bridge tournament. We’d snuck outside and shared a few joints between courses. But what on earth would have made me say that? Was I so wasted? ‘Well, John, I’ve never been averse to a nice mango…�.

He was really being quite intense about the whole thing, ‘I wondered if you wanted me to send you some. Send you some mangoes�. This was really getting a bit silly. For heaven's sake, I lived in Sydney. I merely had to put my hand into the outside air and a mango might fall into it.

And suddenly the penny dropped. He wasn’t talking about mangoes. He was talking about Northern Territory’s finest. He was asking me if I wanted him to send me some dope. Of course! He just didn’t want to say, on the telephone. I was with it. ‘Oh, Mangoes…sorry John. You’re right, I do still love mangoes. Great idea, please do send me some.�

Later that night I told Michael about the whole exchange. He was in complete agreement, clearly John was sending us dope. We are expert bridge players, after all. Like we can’t analyse a situation like this. Like it wouldn’t be obvious in a Stieg Larsson book, what we were really talking about.

A week later a box of mangoes turned up.

Michael, with the desperate conviction of a drug addict, took the box apart and then each mango, still sure he was right. Me, I figured straight away, we weren’t in a crime thriller after all.


-------------------------------------------------------

The last word on this book.

Okay. I’ve, um, read the book now, so here goes. A book review. After a bit of an argument early on with somebody who had read this, I decided to keep some stats. But just as I figured this book was all about the new, busty Salander and the story line was going to be dominated by people sucking on silicon, (people, sic; dykes, yawn), she disappears from the story altogether! What a device. What a piece of creative trickery by the Stieg. What a way to skew my statistics.

You will find her tits on pages:

15/16
27/8
75
85
92
103-4
106-8

and then � well, she’s scarcely in the story for the next few hundred pages. So, although I began the story positively indignant that the superhero had a self-esteem problem that could be resolved by a bit of body mutilation, after a while the whole issue vanished along with the rest of her. I simply don’t understand why Salander would behave in such a tediously average way. I was ready to be really disappointed with this direction (pp. 106-8 is when her friend Wu points out to her that she is hung up about, and obsessed by, her body) but I’d forgotten it soon enough. In fact I wondered if the Stieg got rid of her just so as he didn’t have to find anything more to do with these new possessions of hers.

Setting aside the whole pretend breasts thing, do I have to say anything else about the book? It’s fun, un-put-downable, just like the first one. A dissertation it does not require.

I was disappointed with the chess, p. 143 which is badly done. Although this doesn’t matter in a sense, because none of us know enough to care, if you extrapolate from that, you get to the book itself. If you happen to be in the general field of murder mystery conspiracy, journalistic exposes, police-procedurals etc and think this book is badly done, does that mean it’s badly done? If we all don’t know and don’t care, then it isn’t badly done, is that right? It’s believable because it’s believable. This is just a hypothetical, nothing in particular to do with the book itself.

I hope somebody understands what I’m saying here because I’m not sure I’m with the plot…even though it’s mine. Maybe this is a better way of putting it. If somebody with a modicum of chess knowledge says the chess is badly done we don't care for obvious reasons. But if a crazed killer said to you 'Nup, sorry, that is just so unbelievable the way...This book is just so not like it is.', wouldn't we care then? Yes? No?

On the usage of the comma in relationship to ‘and�, a source of some discussion recently as I'm confused by how often it is used and why.

p.270 We have the sentence ‘But we do have to stay on top of what the police uncover and worm out of them what they know.� I had to read that a couple of times before I understood it meant: ‘But we do have to stay on top of what the police uncover, and worm out of them what they know.� I thought it meant that the police were uncovering and worming, though of course that sentence doesn’t make sense.

Then, what about these:

p. 231 ‘They had heard no sound from the apartment, and nobody had answered the bell. They returned to their car and parked where they could keep watch on the door.�

Why? Why a comma before the ‘and� in the first of these back-to-back sentences? And if so, then why not in the second?

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