Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death - Irvin D. Yalom

This is a book that makes you want to live - that slaps the greatest fear of every human being right in the face:  death and dying.
After reading this book you are overwhelmed with a feeling of wanting to live, take and make the most out of life before you die. 
One thing though to keep in mind is that it is a very strong book. I for one wasn't able to take it in all at once and took a long time to get it done (which is so NOT me...being that i gobble up about at least a book per week). Yet this book I had to take in what I call small doses. A little at a time. And then think and ponder on what I had just read - and yet not too much as if not it would be too much.
I guess death has a big say in each of our lives and we each react to it in a different way but it is something that is ingrained in every human beings subconscious. 
As Irvin doesn't believe in a divine entity he is able to talk about this topic in a very straightforward and matter of fact tone and not the usual appealing to religion or eternal life that most religious people work their way to when speaking on this touchy subject.

Staring at the Sun: Book Review

How and Why I read this book: This was an offering in the Amazon Vine program which I am a participant in. I received a free advanced reading copy of this book in order to read and review it for Amazon.com. I received no payment for doing that but if you buy this book (or any other item) through the Amazon links on my blog I do receive a small commission.

I am a layperson interested in how our society confronts their fear of death, how people react and adjust to their dying friends and relatives, and how after the passing of loved ones, people are affected. In this last year I have had numerous life experiences that qualified as ‘awakening’ experiences and I was curious to read about this topic of death and how we react to it, including fear and terror of death.

I feel that our American culture is lacking information and support about how people are to react to the dying. Little is written of what life is like for a frail, elderly person, our society is ignorant about the dying process. Not much is said about how the healthy people can and should act or help those who are dying and how to handle mourning. I have seen all different reactions amongst family and friends regarding how they react and live around the dying and how they act and think after the loved one does pass on.

Dr. Yalom, a psychiatrist, has written a book about overcoming the terror of death. I’m not afraid of death itself. I read the book because I hoped it would be of some benefit or use to me. Some of it was useful and some of it was not. How his book affects the reader will vary depending on the uniqueness of each person and probably also will depend on their religious beliefs or lack thereof and how they jive with what Dr. Yalom’s belief system.

Using the philosophies of famous philosophers and their ideas of creation and what happens to our body and soul after death, Yalom has constructed a way that he thinks is right and best for us to think about our eventual death and how we react to the death of loved ones. He provides us with a foundation of having a certain idea about how we should go about living while we are alive and well. One glitch is that in order to accept and use these ideas we have to agree on some foundational beliefs which Yalom explains in the book.

Mixed in with all of this are discussions of how today’s therapists usually counsel their patients versus his method, which combines an existential philosophy. We learn of how Sigmund Freud’s teachings have shaped and influenced today’s therapists. Dr. Yalom feels that many of the problems in people’s lives are actually based in having a fear of death; some people know that and others don’t realize that a death terror is the basis of problems in their lives.

Dr. Yalom wrote this book in language that a layperson can understand in the hopes that laypeople will read it as a self-help book and that they can use his ideas to go about living a better life and to rid themselves of some or all of their fear of death.

Dr. Yalom wishes more therapists and doctors would be more aware of the existence of death terror and he hopes they will read this book also. There is one chapter addressed specifically to therapists about how they might include these ideas in their practice. That chapter includes detailed information about how dreams can be the way a person’s mind expresses death terror. He feels that therapists can use dream interpretation in their practice as a clue to revealing a hidden death terror, then they can begin work on addressing their death terror to solve the root cause of the patient’s problem which then resolves the more obvious day to day problems happening in their lives, which are probably the reason the person came to therapy in the first place. I loved the idea of solving the root of the problem.

I didn’t expect this book to include so many references to the ideas of famous philosophers. I found it very interesting to the point where I would like more information and I plan to follow-up by reading some of the writings of these philosophers. (Previously I was not only afraid to read what philosophers said as I thought they may be too complex or not-understandable, but didn’t know why I should bother.) I appreciated the encouragement to read the original writings of Schopenhauer, in fact, one thing that disappointed me was that Dr. Yalom didn’t explore in more detail (such as an devoting an entire chapter to) Schopenhauer’s triplet of essays. Much was written about Nietzsche and I am intrigued and plan to read his original writings also.

A problem that some readers will have with the advice in the book will be if a reader’s spiritual and religious beliefs are different, then the basic model of how to use the advice in the book will not apply 100%. Some readers, if they knew these things in advance, would never buy or read the book, especially those who seek to avoid the secular humanist view.

To be specific, Yalom makes it clear that he has never believed in a God, ever. Raised in a home where his parents practiced Judaism, he says he never believed in any kind of God, even in his childhood. He lays out a way of thinking that to me is in line only with secular humanism. His belief system includes the idea that we come from nothing, are born with a soul and a physical body and when we die, both our soul and body dies completely and we return to a black hole of nothingness, permanently. The idea is that if we feel nothing after death and are completely gone and dead then we should not fear that death, nor will we even be able to feel regret for having not done everything we had hoped we do in our living days.

While he is not too insulting about people’s beliefs in other things he makes it clear on page 245 is that His “bete noir is bizarre belief: aura therapy, semi-defied gurus; hands-on healers; prophets; untested healing claims of various nutritionalists; aroma therapy, homeopathy, and zany ideas about such things as astral traveling, healing powers of crystals, religious miracles, angels, feng shui, channeling, remote viewing, meditational levitation, psychokinesis, poltergeists, past lives therapy and UFOs and extrerrestrials who inspired early civilizations, designed patterns in wheat fields, and built the Egyptian pyramids.” He continues, “Still I’ve always believed that I could put all prejudices aside and work with anyone regardless of his or her belief systems.” An issue is that some who believe in the aforementioned things, even Catholics who believe in miracles, may take such an affront to his outlook that they will close their minds to what Dr. Yalom has to say or they may choose to not read a single word of the book.

My feeling is that while some of Yalom’s ideas can be worked into belief systems such as the various types of Christianity, not all of them will completely jive, especially the idea that there is no Heaven and that the soul dies after birth. Other religions are also incompatible, anything that encompasses reincarnation or the idea that the soul continues to live on after the body perishes, such as the religions of Buddhism or Hinduism

This book will be the best fit as a self-help book for agnostics or Atheists. It may also be accepted easily by those who have not developed any spiritual beliefs yet who would not have any conflicts (and in fact, if while reading this book if they liked what it said they would be accepting a secular humanist belief without possibly even realizing it).

One last thing I’ll share about what I learned is that I am surprised to learn that modern therapists including psychiatrists (medical doctors) are, according to Dr. Yalom, in denial about the reality that in their daily life people are affected by a fear of death or have been affected by experiencing the death of people they care about. I don’t know a lot about the field of psychotherapy (I’ve never been in counseling or been through psychotherapy) but after reading this book, the field has lost some credibility with me. Basing so many theories on Freud and his denial of the reality of people being affected by death is scary.

I also hadn’t realized that the professional care and medical treatment given by psychiatrists would overlap into religious realms. I have a new concern that medical insurance companies are paying for treatments and therapies of what really is counseling that overlaps with religion especially if the therapists are pushing an Atheist worldview on their patients. I now can see why religious people would avoid these types of counselors and seek instead, counseling and advice from their pastors, preachers and priests.

I found the book interesting and food for thought. I am glad I read it as it addresses topics that I feel are not written about much today. Additionally, the book had me thinking and pondering and any book that covers seldom written about topics and makes me think automatically earns 4 stars from me.

The Paris Wife - Paula McLain

No truly great story finishes in love and "happily-forever-after" ...
Some stories are really beautiful and this is one of these stories. Reading this book was like a torrent of emotions welling up inside of me: first the joy and laughter at seeing Happy Hadley meet her Prince Charming and have him whisk her away to Paris where they endure their hard hard years of poorness, isolation and adapting to the new country. Yet at this time their love is stable and firm like a rock. And then it all changes - ever rising, continuously growing: money, drinks, cigarettes, trips to Pamplona, parties, popularity and philosophical figures - they come all at once. But the fall is just around the corner - not quite as fat as it many times happens but their love and life built together falls nonetheless. 
Of many things in this book one is quite true: no one we love is lost forever because some part of them will always be inside our very innermost soul. 
Paris. Yes, it is all about Paris! The city of love, the city of hate - where all the passion and the pleasures of life are mixed together leaving tortured souls trapped inside of her. Trapped inside their minds because they invented it all inside their heads.
Together they built it all also together they destroyed it in just one second. 
The same way it was with Hadley and her forever love story with Ernest Hemingway. She discovered that fighting for a love that has gone is like trying to live in the ruins of a lost city. Some things we know we can stand them yet others we just have to accept that we can stand to loose. 

Book Review:

No one ever accused Ernest Hemingway of creating memorable women characters — except perhaps in his posthumously published Paris memoir, “A Moveable Feast,” where he idealizes his first wife, Hadley Richardson, as the alter ego who shared with him the good old days before fame and fortune and another woman wrecked it all.

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Hemingway Collection/JFK Library, via Associated Press

Hadley and Ernest Hemingway in 1922.

THE PARIS WIFE

By Paula McLain

320 pp. Ballantine Books. $25.

Related

• Books of The Times: ‘The Paris Wife’ by Paula McLain(February 28, 2011)

Hadley Richardson now comes into her own, sort of, as the long-suffering wife in Paula McLain’s stylish new novel. Narrated largely from Hadley’s point of view, “The Paris Wife” smoothly chronicles her five-year marriage to the novelist, most of which was spent in Paris among aspiring writers when, as McClain’s Hadley recalls, “we were beautifully blurred and happy.” This is her own movable feast: Paris was fresh, the wine was flowing and “there was only today to throw yourself into without thinking about tomorrow.”

Though initially disgusted by the expatriate community, which, as the fictional Hadley remembers, “preened and talked rot and drank themselves sick,” Hemingway was ineluctably drawn into its orbit — and then into the orbit of the rich, who “had better days and freer nights. They brought the sun with them and made the tides move.” No one does this better than chic Pauline Pfeiffer, a wealthy Midwesterner who works for Vogue, wears “a coat made of hundreds of chipmunk skins sewn painfully together” and sets her cap for Ernest. “Keep watch for the girl who will come along and ruin everything,” Hadley warns herself, after the fact.

There’s a certain inevitability, then, about what happens in “The Paris Wife.” Based on letters and biographies, and on Hemingway’s own ample recollections of Paris, the novel proceeds by the book — all the books, in fact, about Paris in the 1920s, including those by Hemingway — and thus bumps against the usual expatriate suspects, like Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ezra Pound, who, as Hadley almost apologetically explains, “were or would soon become giants in the field of arts and letters, but we weren’t aware of this at the time.”

Livelier and fresher is the reconstruction of Hadley’s youth. The migraine-ridden daughter of a suffrage-minded mother and an alcoholic father who had committed suicide, Hadley is a sheltered young woman from St. Louis who plays Rachmaninoff on the piano while yearning to break free of the staid “Victorian manners keeping everything safe and reliable.” Hemingway is just the ticket. Though eight years her junior, he is an ambitious, proud fledgling journalist intending to be a great writer. “There wasn’t any fear in him that I could see, just intensity and aliveness,” Hadley notes with cloying naïveté. The couple meet in Chicago, soon marry and, on the advice of Sherwood Anderson, bolt the monotonous Midwest for adventure, paid for partially by Hadley’s inheritance, in the City of Light.

But the city soon turns gray and rainy. Forlorn whenever Ernest leaves her, Hadley tries to keep him from going to Smyrna to cover the Greco-Turkish war. “I was asking him to choose me over his work,” she acknowledges. His refusal signals the beginning of the end. Two months later, when Ernest is covering the peace conference in Lausanne, Hadley plans to meet him there and, for a surprise, to bring him all his manuscripts, including carbon copies and a novel-in-progress. She packs them into a small suitcase, then somehow manages to lose the bag on the train.

Fighting him with the only weapon at her disposal — passive aggression — she has also forgotten to bring her birth control. Hadley wants a child; Ernest does not. “What was really unacceptable were bourgeois values, wanting something small and staid and predictable, like one true love, or a child,” she says without affect. “I was supposed to have my own ideas and ambitions and be incredibly hungry for experience and newness of every variety. But I wasn’t hungry; I was content.”

In Pamplona, Hadley identifies with the bulls. “My body was doing what it was meant to do,” the now pregnant Hadley reflects, “and these animals, they were living out their destinies too.” Of course, as we know all too well, Hadley isn’t any more insulated from disaster than the animals in the ring, though she, like Hemingway, again blames the rich Americans who ride into Pamplona in chauffeured limousines — and who “spoil everything.”

What to do? Eat, drink and not think about tomorrow, à la Hemingway — or at least according to a ravenous Hadley, now a Hemingway character manqué. “I found I was hungry,” she says when they settle into a cafe after watching a man being gored at a bullfight, “and that it all tasted very good to me.” We recall the physically damaged Jake Barnes of “The Sun Also Rises,” who takes refuge in food and alcohol and in acting hard-boiled but cries himself to sleep at night. As Jake’s female counterpart, the symbolically impotent and resolutely unmodern Hadley lulls herself for a short time into a willful state of denial while her writer husband shapes “disaster and human messiness” into “something that would last forever.” In other words, she rationalizes her grief by romanticizing Hemingway’s talent.

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While McLain’s portrait of this impossible marriage can be harrowing, it can also be frustrating, for Hadley rarely emerges from her wistful cocoon. And though McLain’s Hemingway declares his Paris wife “better and finer than the rest of us” — and McLain seems in part to agree — the praise sounds portentously like Nick Carraway’s salute to Jay Gatsby. McLain has transformed Hadley into a Mrs. Gatsby not because Hadley is rich or powerful or corrupt but because she is the opposite of all these things. And that means she is hardly more than a stereotype, alas, caught in a world not of her own making.

PS: I Love You - Cecelia Ahern

If anything I was disappointed by this book. I heard so many people speak so well concerning the movie and I am sure that influenced me in buying the book - but as most always happens when we put too many expectations on one thing...yes, I was disappointed!
No tears (I love crying or almost crying when reading books), no big lesson, no touching moment - and even the parts in which I believe I was meant to laugh all I felt was "corny". 
It could also be that because the whole story is about a overly dependent on her husband widow learning how to get up and get on with life - and my life just has absolutely nothing in common with the main character of this story (not only my life but my personality as well) and so that might have been the reason me and this book just didn't click.
Now on the other hand, just watching the trailer of this book it seems so nice, funny and light - my type of movie! Who knows for once in history the movie IS better than the book. Can't wait to to prove to myself it is really so, hah! 

Wikipedia on "PS: I Love You":

P.S. I Love You is Irish writer Cecelia Ahern's first novel, published in 2004. The book reached #1 bestseller status in Ireland (for 19 weeks), the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, and the Netherlands.

Characters in "P.S. I Love You"

• Holly Kennedy - The main character
• Gerry Kennedy- Holly's husband
• Sharon McCarthy - Holly's best friend
• John McCarthy - Sharon's Husband
• Denise Hennessey - Holly's best friend
• Tom O'Connor - Denise's fiance
• Daniel Connolly - Holly's friend
• Elizabeth Kennedy - Holly's mother
• Frank Kennedy - Holly's father
• Richard Kennedy - Holly's older brother
• Meredith Kennedy - Richard's wife
• Timothy Kennedy - Richard's son
• Emily Kennedy - Richard's daughter
• Jack Kennedy - Holly's brother
• Abbey - Jack's girlfriend
• Ciara Kennedy - Holly's younger sister
• Mathew - Ciara's Australian boyfriend
• Declan Kennedy - Holly's younger brother
• Leo - Holly's hair stylist
• Barbara - A travel agent
• Chris Feeney - Holly's boss
• Alice Goodyear - Holly's secretary
• Charlie - A bartender
• Laura - Daniel's ex-girlfriend

[edit]Reception

Despite the hype and commercial success, (Irish political figure Bertie Ahern's daughter) Cecilia Ahern's debut novel drew mixed-to-negative reception. Radio Telefís Éireann (RTÉ) gave it three out of five stars, stating that Ahern's book is "funny and emotional" but criticised his impression that the message of the book was one of getting over the death of a loved one by "getting drunk and shopping".^[1] The Guardian wrote a satirical review in which Ahern's shallow characterisation and melodramatic plot were lampooned.^[2] The Clare County library called the book "overhyped", "predictable" and "full of stock characters", but lastly an "easy read... and a nice holiday read".^[3] Amazon.co.uk calls it "at times repetitive and her delivery is occasionally amateurish [but] Ahern deserves credit for a spirited first effort".^[4]

The plot is uncannily and extremely similar to that of a 1997 Korean film entitled The Letter^[5][6] & the Indian film titled "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai".

[edit]Movie adaptation

Main article: P.S. I Love You (film)

A film adaptation of the book was released in 2007 with Hilary Swank as Holly, and Gerard Butler as her husband, Gerry. James Marsters plays John McCarthy and Jeffrey Dean Morgan plays William Gallagher. The cast included Kathy Bates, Harry Connick, Jr., Gina Gershon and Lisa Kudrow. Filming began in October 2006 in New York City and Ireland, and the movie was released on 21 December 2007 in the United States (see below for other release information).^[7]

Although box office numbers were high, critics gave the film poor reviews. As of January 2008, the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 21% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 82 reviews.^[8] Metacritic reported that the film had an average score of 42 out of 100, based on 15 reviews.^[9]

The scripts used in the production of the movie all had to be revised because page 76, line 13, did not read "I love you, Holly Kennedy," and instead mistakenly read "I love you, Holly Bok."^[10]

[edit]Differences between novel and film adaptation

The major difference between the novel and its film adaptation is that, in the novel, the main characters Holly and Gerry Kennedy are Irish. In the film, only Gerry is Irish, Holly and her family are Irish Americans, and the two live in New York. Also in the novel, Holly has numerous siblings, but in the film she has one. In the film, Jeffrey Dean Morgan plays William, a character who does not exist in the book. Another change is that in the books, the letters arrive all in a package together and Holly is expected to open them once a month. In the movie, the letters are delivered by mail. However, the film remains fairly true to the novel, and all of Gerry's letters are virtually unchanged.

Something Blue - Emily Griffins

 Ok, so you start reading this book and you just cant stop laughing. It is hilarious, light, superficial - so much that it almost gets retarded and idiotic - but not just quite. The main character, Darcy, narrates her life story to the reader: always beautiful, popular, funny, able to have any guy she wanted all she lacked was a bit of IQ. But that was no problem as her best friend Rachel was a storehouse of brains and wiz and at the slightest hint of a problem she was the one to fall. And then Darcy's perfect little world starts to crumble. Her perfect fiancee, Dex, leaves her for her best friend Rachel. Not that that was such a big deal because Daring Darcy was cheating on Dex with his best-man, Marcus, for quite a while now. Next problem happens when she gets pregnant of Marcus and he dumps her. And so does her mother and her whole family. Her friends disappear, her job goes haywire, she then realizes she is at the end of her rope and in a desperate attempt to begin all over again from scratch she moves to London to live with her last friend remaining: smart, sweet Ethan. From this point of the story everything changes. It still continues to be a light read but instead of crying tears of laughter you start wiping tears of so touched you are by the story. Motherhood, honesty, true friendship, love and relationships, family, forgiveness, renewal and personal change is what happens to Darcy  and makes you wish it could happen to you too. Beautiful!!! Thumbs up to Emily Griffin!!! 

Book review: ‘Something Blue’ by Emily Giffin

Darcy Rhone has made a career — and life — on her charisma and attractiveness. Coupled with the fact that she’s always been the hottest woman in any room and far more beautiful than her best friend since childhood, Rachel, Darcy’s existence has centered around her high-powered PR job, gorgeous (and paper-perfect) fiance Dex and their lavish lifestyle in New York City.

Until she discovers Dex has been cheating on her with plain ol’ Rachel — and until she begins sleeping with Marcus, one of her groomsmen in the upcoming wedding she’d planned with Dex, her boyfriend of seven years. And until she gets pregnant.

And then? Things get complicated.

Emily Giffin’s Something Blue, sequel to the mega-successful Something Borrowed, centers around Darcy’s life as she struggles to get over the ridiculous, over-the-top life she’s created for herself through a lifetime of selfish decisions — and struggles with impending motherhood and the idea of the “perfect man,” whomever he may be. (And chances are it just isn’t Marcus.)

If you’ve read Something Borrowed – and, before starting this one, you should — you’ll remember our dear Darcy as the spoiled, bratty and wholly unlikeable best friend of Rachel, our narrator in the first of Giffin’s novels. Despite the fact that I knew Dex and Rach’s tryst was wrong, it was so obvious that they were in love — not Dex and Darcy — that you couldn’t help but cheer for the star-crossed lovers. Basically, Darcy just sucked. And I didn’t really want her to be happy.

Well, Giffin once again proves her mastery in the fiction genre by taking someone I was predisposed to despise and making me cheer for her. For the first half of the book and then some, Darcy is up to her old tricks and nonsense, making terrible decisions and living in a dream world in which she’s not reallypregnant. Marcus turns out to be a world-class jerk — no huge shock — but you can’t help but feel sorry for him as Darcy waxes on and on about whether Dex and Rachel are happy, badgering him to death about how Dex could have reallychosen someone like Rachel over her.

But then things begin to change. After Darcy makes a decision to leave New York and stays with Ethan, a good friend since childhood, she’s forced to take a serious look at herself in a mirror: and doesn’t like what she sees, particularly reflected through Ethan’s eyes. And when Darcy decides enough is enough, I was right there with her, ready to see some serious changes and root for her through her pregnancy and love affairs. From the beginning of the novel, Darcy’s tone of voice indicates she’s reflecting back on a less flattering time of her life — and knowing that she would have to change kept me with her on the journey.

Even at her very worst, Something Blue is compulsively readable because of the commanding way in which we see the world through Darcy’s (skewed) lens. Giffin’s fast-paced, silky writing keeps readers moving quickly and, though I often wanted to punch Darcy for being so hopelessly shallow, it was easy to see that she was a product of her upbringing . . . and we can only hope things will change for the next generation.

Fans of chick lit are probably acquainted with Giffin already, but if not? Definitely pick up Something Borrowed and follow it up with this sequel, two of the “classics” in the women’s fiction genre.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest

The last book to Stieg Larson's sequel - and just saying so is a pity. He is such an incredible writer and knows how to grip his reader that it is sad to know there won't be anymore stories coming from him. 
The good thing though of this being the last book is that you FINALLY get to the end and discover the whole story, all the tinest details, the truth about every sneaky (and non sneaky) character - and all by all the hidden secrets that are only revealed at the very end of a suspense novel such as this one. 
Besides reading all the three books I also watched all three movies as I felt it would be cool to "put a face to the figure". The movies are fantastic as well but nothing compared to the books (though this was to be excpected!) as there are just so many little things that go missing when you make a movie - just the fact that you can't narrate the character's thoughts is a huge thing. 
So for those who are looking for a gripping read (the kind that keeps you up all night, no kidding!) run to your nearest bookstore and make this book - I mean, these books - all yours!!!  

WIKIPEDIA on "THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNETS NEST":

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (original title in Swedish: Luftslottet som sprängdes, in English literally The Castle of Air That Was Blown Up) is the third and final novel in the best-selling "Millennium series"^[1] by Swedish writer Stieg Larsson. The novel is the sequel to The Girl Who Played with Fire. It was published posthumously in Swedish in 2007 and in English in the UK in October 2009.

The US and Canadian editions, published on May 25, 2010, are titled The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, with "hornet" in the singular form.^[2][3]

Plot

The book begins as Lisbeth Salander is flown to Sahlgrenska Hospital. It picks up where The Girl Who Played with Fire left off.

[edit]In the hospital

After surgery, she is moved to an intensive care ward under guard, accessible only to police, doctors, nurses, and her lawyer, Annika Giannini (who is also Mikael Blomkvist's sister). Zalachenko, whom Salander injured with an axe, is two rooms away. Niedermann is on the run from the police after murdering a police officer and carjacking and kidnapping a woman during his escape. Niedermann seeks help from his old friends at the outlaw Svavelsjö Motorcycle Club, kills the treasurer and steals 800,000 kronor before disappearing.

Evert Gullberg, the founder and former chief of "the Section", a secret division of Swedish Security Service (Säpo) that harbored and protected Zalachenko, asks former Section associate Frederik Clinton to become acting head of the Section and plots to deflect attention away from the Section by silencing Salander, Blomkvist and Zalachenko.

They first form a working alliance with the unsuspecting prosecutor of Salander's case, Richard Ekström. Dr. Peter Teleborian, the psychiatrist who supervised Salander when she was previously institutionalized, provides Ekstrom with a false psychiatric examination and recommends that she be reinstitutionalized, preferably without a trial.

Gullberg, who has terminal cancer, murders Zalachenko in his hospital bed and then commits suicide. Section operatives stage a suicide for Gunnar Björck, the junior Säpo officer who had handled Zalachenko after the latter's defection, and who was Blomkvist's source of information about the Section. Other Section operatives burgle Blomkvist's apartment, mug Annika Giannini, and plant bugs in the homes and phones of Millennium staff. Undeterred, Blomkvist continues to investigate the Section for a Millennium exposé.

[edit]Counterattack

Blomkvist hires Dragan Armansky's Milton Security to handle countersurveillance. Armansky informs Säpo Constitutional Protection Director Torsten Edklinth about the constitutional violations. Edklinth, along with his assistant Monica Figuerola, begins a clandestine investigation into the Section. After Figuerola confirms the allegations, Edklinth contacts the Justice Minister and thePrime Minister who approve a full investigation by Constitutional Protection, and later invite Blomkvist to a confidential meeting in which they are to share information. They agree to Blomkvist's deadline—he intends to publish his findings about the state's manipulation of Salander's constitutional rights at the beginning of her trial. Meanwhile, Figuerola and Blomkvist have an affair.

Blomkvist convinces Salander's doctor, Dr. Anders Jonasson, to return her handheld computer. Blomkvist arranges to have a phone placed in a duct leading to Salander's room, allowing her to access the Internet and communicate.

[edit]Berger subplot

Erika Berger leaves Millennium to be editor-in-chief at Sweden's largest daily paper, the fictional Svenska Morgon-Posten (S.M.P.). Meanwhile, Henry Cortez, a reporter at Millennium, uncovers a story about a Swedish company manufacturing toilets that engages child labour in Vietnam. After a while he discovers that the boss of the firm is Magnus Borgsjö, who is also the major shareholder of S.M.P. and therefore Berger's boss. Blomkvist gives a copy of the story to Berger, and she decides to confront him. Berger also begins receiving graphic emails and threats. The stalker even breaks into Berger's home and steals scandalous private materials belonging to Berger. Berger engages Milton Security to help secure her home, and hires a Milton employee named Susanne Linder to help protect her home. With the help of Lisbeth, Berger's stalker is exposed as a fellow employee at S.M.P. and high school classmate of Berger, Peter Fredriksson. Linder confronts Fredriksson and recovers Berger's things. However, Fredriksson also stole the story that Blomkvist gave Berger, and anonymously e-mailed Borgsjö the story. Borgsjö orders Berger to suppress the story at Millennium. Berger decides to print the story in S.M.P. in Cortez's name, and then resigns from S.M.P. and returns to Millennium. Borgsjö and Fredriksson are forced to resign.

On the eve of Salander's trial, the Section, desperate to silence Blomkvist and destroy his credibility, hire two members of the Yugoslav mafia to murder him and Berger, while planting cocaine in his apartment. Figuerola and her fellow agents are able to intercept and foil their plans. Blomkvist and Berger go to a Milton safehouse until the trial. Berger intuits Figuerola's and Blomkvist's affair, and promises Figuerola to stay clear of Blomkvist as long as they are together.

Meanwhile, Salander is transferred to prison to start her trial.

[edit]Trial

On the third day of Salander's trial, Giannini systematically destroys Teleborian's testimony, proving: that the Section and Teleborian had conspired to commit Salander at age 12 to protect Zalachenko, that Salander's rights had been repeatedly violated, and that they were once again conspiring against her. During this time, Millennium's exposé of Zalachenko and his abuses against Salander and her family, along with a book entitled The Section, are released, becoming the story of the year. The same day, teams from Edklinth's unit arrest the ten members of the Section. Blomkvist and Edklinth provide evidence proving that Teleborian's recent "psychiatric assessment" of Salander was fabricated and that he was working with the Section to silence her. Teleborian is later arrested for possession of child pornography, which was found on his computer by Salander and her hacker friends, Plague and Trinity.

[edit]Aftermath

With the evidence and credibility of the prosecution shattered, the prosecutor drops all charges against Salander. Freed, Salander embarks on an overseas trip to forget the events. She spends several months at Gibraltar, among other things to pay a visit to the man managing the billions she had stolen from Hans-Erik Wennerström in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. She also tracks down Miriam Wu, who is studying at a university in Paris.

As Zalachenko's daughter, Salander inherits half of his properties and wealth, which she has no choice but to accept; the other half goes to her twin sister Camilla. Suspicious about an abandoned factory in her father's estate, she goes there to investigate and finds two dead women and Niedermann, who had been hiding there from the police. After a brief struggle and chase, Salander outwits Niedermann by nailing his feet to the plank floor with a nail gun. She is tempted to kill him herself, but instead leaves the warehouse and reports his location to the head of the Svavelsjö biker gang, who had previously attacked Salander. After the gang arrives, Salander directs the police to the warehouse with Niedermann and the bikers; she then watches as the police arrive and begin a stand-off with the bikers. She leaves before it is over, satisfied that both Niedermann and the biker have received payback. She later learns that Niedermann was killed by the bikers and that the head biker was shot by the police while resisting arrest.

Back at her apartment in Stockholm, Salander receives a visit from Blomkvist. The story, as well as the Millennium trilogy, ends with the two finally reconciling.

[edit]Characters from Larsson's life

• Svante Branden helps Lisbeth Salander "by denouncing the fraudulent analysis of Dr. Peter Teleborian and the arbitrary internment to which he had subjected her." Stieg Larsson and his life partner Eva Gabrielsson were loaned a student room by the real Svante Branden who, after being neighbors with Larsson in Umeå, was a psychiatrist and a friend. In her book "There Are Things I Want You to Know" About Stieg Larsson and Me, Gabrielsson writes that the character and the person were a lot alike because Svante "was against every form of violation of human rights and freedom. When Stieg made him one of the heroes of The Millennium Trilogy, it was a way of paying homage to him." ^[5]
• Anders Jonasson, the doctor who helps Salander significantly throughout her hospital stay is based on Anders Jakobsson, a longtime friend of Stieg Larsson and Eva Gabrielsson. His name was changed in the novel to Jonasson after he ran into Erland, Larsson's father, in a supermarket and told him how he felt about Gabrielsson being denied access to Larsson's estate after his death.^[5]
• Kurdo Baksi, Kurdish-Swedish publisher of Black and White magazine and collaborator of Stieg Larsson at the Expo Foundation is mentioned as a character in the books, along with his publishing house.

[edit]Reception

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest was listed at the top of Amazon.com's bestseller list before arriving in bookstores, extremely unusual for an English-language book in translation.^[6] Just as unusually, this book was not made available in paperback until February 21, 2012, or more than two years after its original English-language publication in October 2009,^[7] probably because it still regularly appeared in Top 10 best seller lists as a hardcover book (e.g., rated #5 in the New York Times best seller list for the week ending January 29, 2012).^[8]

The Millennium series is described in a New York Times review as "utterly addicting", and this, the third in the series, received a good review.^[9] Salander is described as "one of the most original characters in a thriller to come along in a while". The combination of her resourcefulness, intelligence and apparent fragility underlies her ability to win the battle to have her re-institutionalized. The compelling character of Salander and her past, completely explained in the volume of the trilogy, is a counterpoint to Blomkvist's more mundane character, writes the reviewer. The novel itself is compared to John LeCarre's cold-war thrillers.^[10] Writing for The Guardian, Kate Mosse declares that The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest is a "grown-up work for grown-up readers", which she says shows a well-presented plausible narrative.^[11] The Los Angeles Times disagrees, describing the plots as "improbable", but notes the popularity of the series, referring to it as "an authentic phenomenon".^[12] Writing for The Washington Post, Patrick Anderson claims the third in the series "brings the saga to a satisfactory conclusion".^[4]

The overly long and complicated plot is criticized by Marcel Berlins writing for The Sunday Times.^[13] The Los Angeles Times critic agrees, pointing at the implausibility of Larsson's plot, the weak writing and characterizations.^[12]

[edit]Publication history

Larsson submitted the book to two Swedish publishers, with Norstedts Förlag accepting the manuscript for publication. Norstedts commissioned Steve Murray under the pen-name of Reg Keeland to undertake the English translation.^[14]

Alfred A. Knopf bought the rights to the book, along with the preceding two volumes in the series, after Larsson's death in 2004.^[15] The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest was published with a first print-run of 800,000 copies.^[6]