The books & the films part 1 - Mikael & Erika

[jasonc]

First of all, The books are a whole order of magnitude better than the movies. I started the first one and had a hell of time putting it down to do things like eat and sleep.

1) Mikael and Erika's relationship
Yes, Erika is married. Her husband is completely aware of their relationship and accepts it. She will tell him when she is going out to be with Mikael. Mikael was married but is now divorced because his wife couldn't accept his relationship with Erika and most especially the fact that he had no intention of ever giving it up.

In the sections that are focussed on Erika, we discover that she loves both her husband and Mikael equally. Her one true desire is to get the three of them in bed together but she knows that it can never happen

Towards the end of the first book, Lizbeth realises she is in love with Mikael and decides to tell him, thus opening herself up to another person for the first time ever. When she gets to his appartment she sees him going in with Erika, their intentions are obvious. Her love turns to hatred.

This is why she does not contact Mikael in the other two books, but he has to do it.

[Eddie Love]

I also thought the books were compulsively readable and I liked how dense they were in action and detail -- oddly, you care about Lisabeth's trips to Ikea and 7-11, but I also think things spin out of control plot-wise and while she's always fascinating, she becomes less and less believable.

I also think there's something slightly irritating in the books where there's a tone of harsh moral judgment, yet also the debonair sexual escapades of the male character and, by the second book, the heroine has gotten a boob-job and has a fling with an underage boy, which I'm sure wouldn't have been palatable to some readers if he'd been white. (Details all, that I'm certain won't be included in Fincher's film anymore than they were in the Swedish ones.)

Has anyone seen/ heard anything about the subsequent TV series? I'd love to see these, as I think they may have been stand-alone versus more and more Lisabeth mythology.

[jasonc]

And the fact that she left a wife-beater to die in a hurricane also. They just skipped to her leaving to go back home.

There was a TV series? I didn't know that...