THE GIRL WHO SHOPPED AT IKEA

ikea Like many on New York's subway, I've been transported to Sweden lately by the Millennium Trilogy, most recently by the second book, "The Girl who Played with Fire". Stieg Larsson, the late author of these thrillers, recently became the first to sell over 1m e-books on Amazon, and for good reason: his novels are juicy, twisted and a bit sick. But a highlight of Larsson's writing is what happens in between the motorcycle chases, magazine deadlines and torture porn. Lisbeth Salander, his heroine, takes a lot of showers, makes many cheese sandwiches and Billy's Pan Pizzas, and drinks countless cups of coffee from her Jura Impressa X7.

The list-like texture of Larsson's writing was captured perfectly in Nora Ephron's hilarious send-up in the New Yorker recently. "[W]e sometimes wish her weekly shop could be, as lawyers say, stipulated," wrote Mark Lawson in the Guardian. A journalist, Larsson wrote the books at night after work. The series was published only after his death in 2004, excusing the novels from the normal editorial process. But the books are more charming for it. Downtime in murder mysteries is inevitably a bit awkward, a place for hateful tea-sipping in country estates, relentless self-examining and the occasional romantic tryst. Larsson has Salander spend some of this time shopping at Ikea. The result is sheer consumerist poetry, banal and familiar:

She drove to Ikea at Kungens Kurva and spent three hours browsing through the merchandise, writing down the item numbers she needed. She made a few quick decisions.
She bought two karlanda sofas with sand coloured upholstery, five Poäng armchairs, two round side tables of clear lacquered birch, a Svansbo coffee table, and several Lack occasional tables. From the storage department she ordered two Ivar combination storage units and two Bonde bookshelves, a TV stand, and a Magiker unit with doors. She settled on a Pax Nexus three-door wardrobe and two small Malm bureaus.

She spent a long time selecting a bed, and decided on a Hemnes bed from with mattress and bedside table. To be on the safe side, she also bought a Lillehammer bed to put in the spare room. She didn't plan on having an guests, but since she had a guest room she might as well furnish it.

The bathroom in her new apartment was already equipped with a medicine cabinet, towel storage, and a washing machine the previous owners had left behind. All she had to buy was a cheap laundry basket.

What she did need, though, was kitchen furniture. After some thought she decided on a Rosfors kitchen table of solid beechwood with a tabletop of tempered glass and four colourful kitchen chairs.

She also needed furniture for her office. She looked at some improbable work stations: with ingenious cabinets for storing computers and keyboards. In the end she shook her head and ordered an ordinary desk, the Galant, in beech veneer with an angled top and rounded corners, and a large filing cabinet. She took a long time choosing an office chair—in which she would no doubt spend many hours—and chose one of the most expensive options, the Verksam.

She made her way through the entire warehouse and bought a good supply of sheets, pillowcases, hand towels, duvets, blankets, pillows, a starter pack of stainless steel cutlery, some crockery, pots and pans, cutting boards, three big rug, several work lamps, and a huge quantity of office supplies—folders, file boxes, wastepaper baskets, storage boxes, and the like.

One can easily imagine this section of the book being written after an evening spent in Ikea by Larsson himself, furnishing a new apartment.

~ ARIEL RAMCHANDANI

Picture credit: hirotomo (via Flickr)