"There Are Things I Want You to Know" about Stieg Larsson and Me

Starred review from June 20, 2011
In this candid, moving work, Gabrielsson chronicles her life's journey with her longtime companion, Stieg Larsson, the Swedish creator of the Millennium trilogy who died suddenly at age 50, in 2004, before the first volume of his phenomenally successful work (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, in English) was even published. Gabrielsson tells that she had little legal recourse in Sweden to claim his literary and intellectual property even though the childless couple had lived together in Stockholm for 30 years and shared passions for science fiction and political activism; they edited and published their joint antifascist, antiracist newsletter, Expo, begun in the mid-1990s, to combat a wave of extreme right-wing militancy in Sweden. The rights to Larsson's literary trilogy fell posthumously to his father and brother, who shut Gabrielsson out. Gabrielsson writes about their similarities: both came from simple farm people, abandoned as children by their parents to be raised largely by grandparents; they met at a student antiâVietnam War meeting in 1972 and together moved through leftist movements to find meaningful work, Larsson at the Swedish news agency TT, and Gabrielsson as an architect. Much of their political engagement and feminism is reflected in the Millennium books, the writing of which developed much later in Larsson's careerâas Gabrielsson, evidently the person who understood him as few did, warmly, lovingly depicts in this spirited defense of their relationship.