Stories About Stories with Eva Gabrielsson

Seattle is a meta-city. Lacking the decades-spanning essential character of a city like Chicago or Boston, Seattle is constantly re-defined by whichever group of transplants most recently arrived. Not really a city, but somehow about a city. We talk about talking, we self-examine, we tell stories about our stories.

Which makes tonight’s Town Hall Seattle talk with Eva Gabrielsson the perfect Seattle literary event. Gabrielsson, long-time partner of posthumous literary sensation Stieg Larsson, discusses her book “There Are Things I Want You to Know” About Stieg Larsson and Me at 7:30 tonight in this co-presentation with Elliot Bay Books.

Larsson is best known as the author of the Millenium series, a trilogy of gripping thrillers that center on young hacker Lisbeth Salander. The novels were published after Larsson’s death and became worldwide bestsellers; in 2008, four years after his death, Larsson was the second-bestselling author in the world behind Khaled Hosseini.

The novels are at times brutal, thick with imprisonment, rape and murder, but at the same time Larsson is applauded for his ability to render the world through women’s eyes. And as engrossing as the stories themselves are, his real-life narrative is no less so.

Gabrielsson and Larsson never married, which has led to legal disputes over his estate between Gabrielsson and Larsson’s family. Such trouble could easily have been headed off had the long-time partners married, but they had a compelling reason not to do so. Larsson’s work as an investigative journalist covering extremist groups had led to death threats, and the couple was forced to conceal their addresses, something Swedish marriage laws would have made near-impossible. Deepening the saga is the existence of a partially-completed manuscript Larsson left behind on a computer Gabrielsson now possesses. Gabriellson would like to finish the manuscript; the family has refused to allow it. According to the New York Times:

“I have no intention of recounting here the story line of volume four,” she writes, adding that finishing the book is a task that “I am capable of doing.”

Gabriellson will discuss all of this and more tonight. Advance tickets are sold out, but may be available at the door on a standby basis for $5.