Eva Gabrielsson's book, "There Are Things I Want You To Know" About Stieg Larsson and Me is a kind of roving memoir about her life with the famous author (they were together for 32 years). When I met her the other week we talked about Stieg, their life, and the rumour of the fourth Millennium novel. The piece ran in the National Post on Thursday, but you can still catch it on The Afterword. Here's a start:
As Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy was becoming a worldwide bestseller, a different kind of story was taking shape in his family. Larsson’s sudden death in 2005 left Eva Gabrielsson, his life partner of 32 years, completely bereft. She went into shock, stopped eating, became depressed and then discovered there was worse still to come. Larsson and Gabrielsson lived together for 30 years, but because they never married or had children, by Swedish law, she was entitled to nothing.
In her new book “There Are Things I Want You to Know” About Stieg Larsson and Me(the quotation comes from a letter Larsson wrote to her before going to Africa in his twenties), Gabrielsson offers a kind of memoir about her life with Stieg, the Millennium< trilogy, and the years of legal battles and disappointment that have continued. Gabrielsson says she never intended to write a book, but after compiling her hand-written diaries in an effort to make sense of what had happened to her, she realized someone had to stand up and talk about Larsson and where his work came from.
“I’m very reluctant to be this public figure,” she says, sitting in a boardroom in the Toronto office of Random House Canada. “I just did it because there was somebody who had to talk aboutMillenniumand Stieg and I owed it to him, and I find it easy to because, as I say, I didn’t do the writing, but a lot of the content is mine and my ideas. So I know how to talk about this.”
Thanks for sharing! I have this book to read on my desk but haven't got around to it yet!
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