Obtain Immediately Smillas Gevoel Voor Sneeuw Penned By Peter Høeg Supplied As Hardbound

snowy day in Copenhagen, sixyearold Isaiah falls to his death from a city rooftop, The police pronounce it an accident, But Isaiah's neighbour, Smilla, an expert in the ways of snow and ice, suspects murder, She embarks on a dangerous quest to find the truth, following a path of clues as clear to her as footsteps in the snow.
It was an intense read, It had me confused from time to time, The emotional apathy and disconnection of the characters confused me here and there, For instance, people want to kill each others and then sit out on the deck of a ship and smoke a cigarette together.


The death of a little boy had an emotionallychallenged woman, Miss Smilla, who knew everything about snow and ice, start asking questions.
In the process she unknowingly opens up a can of worms, . . Yes, definitely worms

It was not a highrolling suspense thriller, compared to other books in the genre, but still informative and a good read.
I actually liked the experience, But you do need time and patience,

On the back cover the Sunday Times Magazine states: " Part murder mystery, part philosophical meditation it's compulsive pageturner.
Unlike his heartbreaking heroine, the author doesn't put a foot wrong, "

The explanation of scientific theories and mathematically philosophies will be interesting for those enjoying the different debates on it.


The excitement was absent, but that's okay, The sun never shone in Greenland and Norway, It was winter. The ice and snow were everywhere, including the characters' psyche, It took some getting used to, but it did not let me feel at home at all, While people was frolicking around in our swimming pool, slapping steaks and chops on barbeque fires and drinking ice cold beers to escape the scorching summer temperatures of the southern hemisphere, I was reading this book, getting caught up in the darkness of the Norwegian environment and the people's souls.
The book captured me enough that I wanted to addblankets to our bed, switched on all the heaters and lights in the house, while outside the last few days averaged a temperature ofDegrees Fahrenheit in my world!

So yes, I am glad I could escape it all when closing the book, but even gladder that I read it.
It was a good experience,



I found this a long and difficult book to read, Before deciding to read this book for the summer read athon, I checked out some of the reviews, The reviews were very polarised, two camps, loved it or hated it, Not to be put off I chose to purchase and read this for the Christmas, Snow theme, What I didn't bargain for was a long winded dissertation on the plight of Inuits living in Greenland under Danish rule.
This just went on and on, As for the heroin, Smilla Jarpersen, what a depressing, reclusive character she turned out to be, All the unfamiliar Danish and Greenlandic names of people and places were also a bit disconcerting,

At its most basic this is a story of a little boy who dies when he fell from the roof of his house, or seems to have.
But Smilla, who is some sort of snow expert, doesn't like the foot prints in the snow on the roof.
She start making enquiries and discovers that something nefarious has been going on in Greenland of and on for the lastyears.
The story becomes really convoluted, shifting in time without any warning, Constantly having to going back to see what you have missed, Everything does start to make some sense towards the end of the book but even the end is so unsatisfying.
I don't mind open ended ending but this ending just left me thinking, why did I wastehours of my life reading this.

I only recommend this book for people who like obscure Scandinavian writing, An excellent and intelligent thriller, Set in Denmark and Greenland, you should probably make sure you are wearing your kamiks!

This is the second of the author's books I've read, the first being sitelinkThe Quiet Girl.
I think I would really have enjoyed listening to this one, as I'm never sure how to pronounce all those words with the O's with the lines through them.


Also, I did have a little problem following all the names and characters, I'm sure I missed some detail or other,

It was a wonderful thriller, It took a while to get into, because I did not really care for the protagonist, Smilla Jaspersen, But once the conspiracy reared its ugly little head, I was full in to the story, I do love me a good conspiracy novel,

Also, a smattering of the supernatural is added into the mix, Giving it a bit of an XFiles feel, Did you hear Mulder amp Scully are coming back!! The Quiet Girl also had a little supernatural feel too, But it is like adding a dash of salt to the stew, It is just enough to taste,

Highly recommended! Just make sure you have a warm blanket, Actual .stars.

I can see why this is on so many of the “Books You Must Read” listsit is not your typical Nordic Noir.
In fact, it may have helped to define that genre, Høeg gives us a mystery, but certainly not the nowstereotypical format of a mystery story, For one thing, Smilla is a civilian, not associated with the police in any way, Also, the mysterious aspect of this story doesnt really seem to be the centre of the workI think that Høeg was much more interested in the colonial relationship between Denmark and Greenland than in who killed the child, Isaiah.


It wouldnt surprise me to learn that Stieg Larsson had read Smilla before he wrote his Millennium series.
Lisbeth Salander seems to have many similarities to Smilla Jaspersen, Neither of them fits into Scandinavian society, Both of them have technical expertise not necessarily expected in women, Salander in computers, Jaspersen in glaciology, Both of them take physical punishment during the course of the story but it doesnt deter them from their goalsthey seem unstoppable.


Smilla is the perfect main character for exploring the Danish colonial situationher mother is Greenlandic Inuit and her father is a rich amp famous Danish doctor.
She has a foot in both worlds, She is educated, but ironically in glaciology, specializing in ice amp snow, Cue the old myth that the Inuit have overwords for snowand Smilla references quite a few of them during the course of the book.
The supposed result of having so many terms for snow was a greater understanding of that substance, and Smilla is the one who interprets Isaiahs footprints in the snow to reveal that he was murdered.


Interesting in its historical place of inspiring the current genre of Nordic Noir and for its exploration of colonialism, but not the most satisfying murder mystery.


Smilla Jaspersen, a Greenlander by birth now residing in Copenhagen, late

thirties, single, lonely, moody, depressive, seemingly with a grudge against everything, the sort of girl you would take on a first date, ask to be excused to go to the bathroom only you make for the exit.

But somewhere in the perpetual darkness she finds it in her heart to investigate the death of Isaiah, a small boy she befriended in her apartment block, who apparently fell of the roof whilst playing in the snow, but Smilla is an expert when it comes to cold weather conditions, and her knowledge of snow and ice makes her suspicious.
As the tracks in the snow from Isaiah's feet just don't add up as to how he could have fallen to his death.
Driven by a steely determination to find the truth, more for the little boy's sake than her own, she sets of on a dangerous path that will lead her to make enemies as well as allies.


Compared to other Scandinavian crime noir, this was surprisingly different in a good way, but also oddly unusual.
Ingeniously plotted yes, and very atmospheric, but gets bogged down in the middle two thirds, driving around in circles not knowing where it wants to go.
As central to everything that goes on, Smilla is a very well drawn heroine, and gets plunged into a web of intrigue predominated mainly by men, she stands her ground, on her own two feet, after much intimidation, unsavory sexual advances, and assault.
There is definitely a bit of Lisbeth Salander in there, just minus the goth look,

Copenhagen comes alive, and Hoeg obviously knows it inside out, it plays an important, and so does the weather.
As it's freezing cold, biting winds, subzero temperatures, snow and ice everywhere, and this wound only get worse later on, these conditions are just as much a hazard as the shady people being investigated, and this is where things wonder off slightly.
I didn't know anything about the Danish shipping industry, I most certainly do now, as the ins and outs of the shipping business comes to the forefront, with some strange expeditions to Greenland inamp, which become the backbone of the story.
As the story progresses, you tend to forget all about Isaiah, he is barely mentioned, the memory of him drifts away.

Isaiah's father who went on one of these voyages, also died in suspicious circumstances, and a photo taken of him in an Arctic ice cave somewhere high up north leads Smilla to believe that there is something either buried, or hidden there, that is worth killing for to keep a secret.


I have never been a big believer when a book is said to be 'unputdownable', but the last one hundred or so pages truly were, even if the ending falls flat on it's face.
Taut, tense, and claustrophobic in the last third, Smilla would board a cargo ship as one of the crew bound for an unknown location heading towards Greenland, with three passengers who she thinks lie at the heart of the whole case.
The voyage is shrouded in secrecy, the ship itself is ready to pick up a huge amount in weight, drugs, weapons, money, but how on earth would these thing even be there in the first place, one of the most inhospitable places on the planet, covered in millions of tons of ice, what's so precious that it's worth going on an almost suicide mission for, and why did a small child have to die

This never really read as a 'whodoneit', more asks the question why.
It's a bit messy in places, and probably too clever for it's own good, but as a piece of crime/mystery writing it works, and is a good alternative to this type of genre.
But the ending! frustrating to say the least, it's a case of the journey being far greater than it's destination, Miss Smilla and her cast of characters were so quirky that afterpages I found all this quirk over the front of my shirt, all over the dining table well, I call it a dining table and stuck between the keys on my keyboard.
Had to get it out with a Swiss Army knife, once it had dried, Sent a sample off to the lab and the results came back "two parts David Lynch, three parts frankly unbelievable heroine, three parts uninvolving plot which moves at the speed of an exhausted glacier".
As I thought. After an initially overenthusiasticwhich prompted consternation from some parties! and then a toosoberstars, I'm settling on four for this intelligent, brooding, minutely researched, acutely observed thriller.
I think I wanted to give it five for two reasons: I read some negative reviews on this very webpage, and, finding them idiotic, wanted to vindicate this novel.
I also cannot get out of my head the image of the Swiss German cook Urs using a freshly baked, burninghot loaf of bread as a weapon: amazing!

Smilla is the protagonist: halfDanish, halfGreenlandic, slipping through the cracks between both identities, as she also slips through the cracks of her academic, professional and social life.
She has a very keen perception and, through the firstperson voice, the narrative has this hypnotizing pattern of reporting the events of the story, stepping immediately back from a particular event and moving inward to Smilla's abstract or general reflection, and then moving back to the action of the story.
It is a cycle you can see playing out page after page, and it is for the most part engrossing.


As the plot unfolds and new information comes in, one knows more and more about Smilla as a person, but mysteriously less and less about how she will act in the future.
The more one knows about her life and her way of thinking, the less one can predict what she will do and why she will do it.
In the end even she herself doesn't seem to know! This epistemological paradox seems to be one of the major lessons of the book: people that try to instrumentalize and exploit what they know inevitably do terrible things people like Smilla who respect the limits of their knowledge.
. . well, they end up being the victims of those other people,

Brilliantly detailed writing on Copenhagen, on corporate capital, ships and navigation, glaciology, parasitology, nonorganic life: there is a love for the most technical aspects of a system of knowledge in the face of the increasing inability of such systems to remain pure.
Much more could be said if I'd written this review four months ago! Highly recommended, sitelinkSmilla's Sense of Snow wasn't what I was expecting, It was not so bad a book that I could fairly say that I was disappointed but I wasn't left satisfied after the reading experience either.


First off the hero of the story is a half Greenlander who thinks back on her Greenland heritage.
Her knowledge of snow and ice, acquired in childhood, are important to the plot, but this is a book written by a Dane.
Once we get into the exploration of issues around colonialism then it starts to feel a little crass that the Danes seize their country, undermine their way of life and then finally appropriate them via literary culture.
I found it uncomfortable to read a Dane writing that the Greenlandic way of life has to be lived to be understood, this is like the man from Crete declaring that all Cretans are liars.
Here the author is declaring to his readers that he is going to explain to us something he can't understand excellent.
Still there aren't that many Greenlanders about so no doubt you can get away with it,

Some readers have complained that the boat layout doesn't make any sense, others are annoyed at the inaccurate description of the pistol.
Personally I'm mystified by the chef using a loaf of bread as weapon, a single blow of which was apparently enough to knock one of the villains unconscious for an indeterminate length of time.
It doesn't matter how fresh out the oven it was that kind of knockout blow can't be done by bread alone.


Another is the use of the boat to smuggle drugs, OK the lead villains are evil mad scientists, And if you are an evil mad scientist I'm sure it's quite reasonable to build up the money you need to do evil mad science by getting involved in the drugs trade and developing new super opiates as the evil mad scientists do in his novel.
Fair enough, everybody needs to earn their daily bread, But surely when you are undertaking a scientific mission, even an evil and mad scientific mission to a giant meteor which may or may not be alive, you don't endanger the science by trying to smuggle illegal drugs on the boat at the same time or alert the potential suspicions of the authorities by crewing the boat almost entirely with people who have been involved in the drugs trade, particularly when the ambition besides making money of one of the lead evil mad scientists is to win scientific renown.
I'm no scientist but I have this curious suspicion that if you want to win Nobel prizes and dine in close proximity to Scandinavian royalty it's best not to be too obviously associated with the illegal drugs trade.
You need some degree of compartmentalism here,

Then there are a whole bunch of issues because the author has enough material here for two or three books each three hundred pages long but decided instead to stuff them all into one five hundred page novel.
This means there is too much plot like sitelinkThe Northern Light in that respect but better written and it's awkwardly forced together.
In a detective thriller some red herrings and dead ends are both traditional and expected, Authors! In this genre there is no need to tie everything up together!

In this case it makes things worse with far too much explanation shoved into the last fifty pages.
Had parts of the explanation been revealed two or three hundred pages earlier the menace of that revelation would have hung on the conscience of the reader rather than flopping at their feet like a dying fish in the race to finish the book.


There were things I liked such as the whole business of the West Greenlanders trekking over the ice to the meteor.
But having somebody able to track one of them down to, and have the security clearance to gain access to, the US military base at Thule but not have the clearance to do a sound recording of one of the trek survivors in an office or a small meeting room but instead in the restaurant shortly before a wellknown Jazz musician played while luckily the one man in the whole of Copenhagen who understood West Greenlandish and was able to transcribe and translate the contents of the recording was at the same time such a great Jazz fan and was thus able to pin point when the trek occurred seriously overstretched my limited credulity.


All of these thoughts attracted the stillborn ghosts of potential alternatives of this novel to haunt me,

In one a woman from Greenland tries to track down who ever might be responsible for the death of the young Greenland boy who leaps off the roof of the building.
Unfortunately being a Greenlander in Denmark she suffering from cultural alienation and confusion and since both she and the victim are Greenlanders neither are taken seriously by the authorities.
This would be a slightly pessimistic novel best appreciated midhibernation, under the duvet, with bottles of strong liquor,

Alternatively a woman with mixed Greenland heritage has an almost instinctual feeling for snow and ice that help her solve all kinds of crimes that occur in winter, rather like those detectives who only solve country house murders or the murders of Oxford academics.


Or perhaps a barely plausible mixture of mad and evil scientists race to find a mysterious meteor that has landed on the ice near Greenland.
The meteor may be radioactive, alive or contain noncarbon based life and is the subject of fierce speculation as they draw nearer across the frozen wastes of the far north.


However I'm absolutely certainly that I would never advise the inclusion of all these elements into a single five hundred page novel unless maybe it was due to be written by Cervantes and edited by Lawrence Sterne.


Having said all that, and despite and perhaps in part because of the author's relentless need to keep up the tension by having a person enter a room unexpectedly with or without a gun just when the hero is on the brink of a crucial discovery, it is a page turner.
Elements of the setting are unusual and it does, just about, avoid dragging the Nazis and hidden gold into the story, so it is not all bad.
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