Peter Høeg

She thinks more highly of snow and ice than she does of love. She lives in a world of numbers, science and memories--a dark, exotic stranger in a strange land. And now Smilla Jaspersen is convinced she has uncovered a shattering crime...

It happened in the Copenhagen snow. A six-year-old boy, a Greenlander like Smilla, fell to his death from the top of his apartment building. While the boy's body is still warm, the police pronounce his death an accident. But Smilla knows her young neighbor didn't fall from the roof on his own. Soon she is following a path of clues as clear to her as footsteps in the snow. For her dead neighbor, and for herself, she must embark on a harrowing journey of lies, revelation and violence that will take her back to the world of ice and snow from which she comes, where an explosive secret waits beneath the ice....… (more)

I've vacillated between 1 star and 4 for this review, so settled on two. It's a truly strange book. It's a little like reading something in a language you've learnt but aren't yet comfortable with: you can understand all the words without having a clue what it's all about. I loved learning about the intimate relationship with snow that Smilla, with her Greenland heritage has. She really understands the nuances between so many differemt kinds of snow and ice.

What happens at the beginning is that a young boy whom she knows falls of a roof and dies. It's put down as an accident by the police, but Smilla smells a rat. The book tells the story of her pursuit of the truth. And I barely understood a single turn of the plot. I found Smilla strange and self-absorbed, but then finding an amiable character in this book is a fairly thankless task.

I gave up following the plot early on. But I persisted because I enjoyed learning about the people of Greenland and their uncomfortable relationship with the Danes. So that was wortwhile. As to whodunnit? No idea. See if you can find out… (more)

"The body's pain is so paper-thin and insignificant compared to that of the mind."

This book was initially written in Danish and then translated into English. The story follows Smilla Jaspersen, a 37-year-old Greenlander living in Copenhagen. Smilla is a loner by nature, but there is one person in her life she feels a connection to, her young neighbour, Isaiah. This is revealed through a series of flashbacks, because in the novel’s opening chapter it is revealed that Isaiah has died following a fall off the snowy roof of their apartment block.

Accidental death say the police but Smilla knows the boy and moreover has a feeling for snow. She reads a different story in his snowy footprints. Isaiah wasn’t playing, he was running from something. Smilla decides to investigate this untimely death and soon realises that she has stumbled onto something much bigger than a solitary death. What's more she can read the smallest changes in ice and snow.

This novel is an entertaining mystery/thriller that IMHO has enough in it for anyone who is a fan of that particular genre but for me, the best part was learning about the history and culture of Greenland. Hoeg deftly explores the many problems of the colonization of this island nation, weaving historical context into his text. I started the novel knowing absolutely nothing about the relationship between Denmark and Greenland, so it was a interesting to learn something about their uneasy history. Hoeg’s prose is densely packed, full of information, action, and on occasion, wonderfully vivid imagery.

Coincidentally I started this on a day that it had started to snow in my own neighbourhood and if nothing else, it reminded me that British winters are rather tame in comparison to those endured in the bone-chilling arctic.

"Whining is a virus, a lethal, infectious, epidemic disease."… (more)