In this week’s New Yorker, Nora Ephron hilariously lampoons the 1st three of maybe four books in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series.
If you haven’t read the books but plan to (ahem, Husband), you probably shouldn’t click the link and read the whole piece. It won’t make much sense but it might spoil some plot points for you if you’re super-fussy about that kind of thing. The pull-quote doesn’t spoil anything, so giggle away at that.
“I can’t really go on without an umlaut,” he said. “We’re in Sweden.”
But where in Sweden were they? There was no way to know, especially if you’d never been to Sweden. A few chapters ago, for example, an unscrupulous agent from Swedish Intelligence had tailed Blomkvist by taking Stora Essingen and Gröndal into Södermalm, and then driving down Hornsgatan and across Bellmansgatan via Brännkyrkagatan, with a final left onto Tavastgatan. Who cared, but there it was, in black-and-white, taking up space. And now Blomkvist was standing in her doorway. Someone might still be following him—but who? There was no real way to be sure even when you found out, because people’s names were so confusingly similar—Gullberg, Sandberg, and Holmberg; Nieminen and Niedermann; and, worst of all, Jonasson, Mårtensson, Torkelsson, Fredriksson, Svensson, Johansson, Svantesson, Fransson, and Paulsson.
“I need my umlaut,” Blomkvist said. “What if I want to go to Svavelsjö? Or Strängnäs? Or Södertälje? What if I want to write to Wadensjö? Or Ekström or Nyström?”
It was a compelling argument.
She opened the door.