Ce qui ne me tue pas de David Lagercrantz (suite de Millénium)

The result, The Girl in the Spider’s Web, is the second most anticipated novel of the year, after Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman. But, whereas Lee’s precursor to To Kill a Mockingbird offered a radically revisionist image of its central character Atticus Finch, Lagercrantz, a tenant rather than a freeholder on the premises, sticks closely to the existing design.

Salander, one of the most original inventions in popular fiction, remains a vengeful, homicidal, self-destructive love rat, and yet surprisingly admirable because of Larsson’s careful attribution of her psychological wiring to survival instincts developed during a terrifying early life. Blomkvist is still a shabby amoralist whose professional standing, as the new story starts, has been diminished by two ancient threats to print journalism – drink and sloth – and a modern one: online competition.

A skilled novelist in his own right – his books include Fall of Man in Wilmslow, about the tragic British computer pioneer, Alan Turing – Lagercrantz has constructed an elegant plot around different concepts of intelligence. His major new character, Frans Balder, is a specialist in artificial intelligence, although he is aiming to move beyond AI to ASI, or artificial super-intelligence, creating machine brains infinitely superior to humans. Balder, whose experiments have made him a person of interest to both the National Security Administration in the US and a tentacular corporation called Solifon, is a single father to a severely autistic eight-year-old son, August, who possesses a human super-intelligence in art, producing drawings that become important to the storyline.

Readers, however, confidently expect Salander to be the most super-intelligent presence in the plot, and it is in the interactions between the savant child and Salander, who may be somewhere on the autistic spectrum herself, that Lagercrantz moves the series into distinctive new and tender territory. The biggest narrative decision is how and when to bring Salander and Blomkvist together again, and he paces their reunion nicely. Initially confined to separate paragraphs or chapters, the question of whether they will ever meet face to face becomes an aspect of the story’s escalating tension.

Because Larsson had a maverick and magpie brain – and the manuscripts would surely have undergone more revision if he had lived – the Millennium Trilogy was messier and more eccentric than much popular fiction, a genre that can lean towards standardisation. Lagercrantz’s continuation, while never formulaic, is a cleaner and tighter read than the originals, although he follows the template in building the plot slowly and methodically. He is, technically, a more adept novelist than Larsson, smoothly switching viewpoint in two sections where characters come under threat from assassins.

Without ever becoming pastiche, the book is a respectful and affectionate homage to the originals. Two of the new characters deliberately nod to the Pippi Longstocking books, which were one of Larsson’s inspirations for Salander; and the Swedish title, Men Who Hate Women, of the first Millennium book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, is alluded to in a number of references to misogny and maltreatment of women. There may still be arguments about whether continuation novels should be written at all, but Lagercrantz could not have fulfilled the commission any more efficiently. The novel leaves much to be said between Salander and Blomkvist and so surely increases the chances of the sequence continuing on towards the 10 books that Larsson is said to have originally imagined.

L'apparition de Camilla, la sœur jumelle détestée de Lisbeth Salander est une très bonne trouvaille.
Son enfance et adolescence, narrées par le gardien de Lisbeth et sa mère d'accueil fait frémir quand on se rend compte qu'elle n'est pas loin d'être un psychopathe.
Le plus glaçant est la scène où elle tape sur son lit à chaque fois que son père frappe sa mère, et la façon dont elle a isolé sa sœur à l'école avec son groupe d'amis  
Savoir qu'elle a repris le "travail" de son père fait peur.
J'ai particulièrement aimé comment elle a choisit son pseudonyme et celui de son groupe, en réaction au pseudonyme Wasp de sa sœur.
La carrière de Blomkvist est bien décrite, entre soucis d'indépendance et attaque personnelle, tout comme son inquiétude pour Lisbeth quand elle sauve August.
Ed the Ned est aussi un personnage haut en couleur et son dialogue avec Lisbeth, à la fin du livre, est superbe.

Je me demandais pendant toute ma lecture si Mikael et Lisbeth se retrouverais à la fin du livre, car ils communiquent surtout par sms.
La fin du livre me plait beaucoup.