Smilla’s Sense of Snow, by Peter Hoeg

(Also known as “Miss Smilla’s Feeling For Snow,”) this intriguing murder mystery/thriller takes place between Denmark and Greenland. The main protagonist in this story, Smilla Jaspersen, is one of the strongest, most interesting female characters to appear in fiction in a very long time.

The novel is written in theoutstanding and very original style of Peter Hoeg and excellently translated by Tiina Nunnally. It is a book with action, suspense, delicious writing, contradictions and mystery. It is a novel that stunned literary audencies both in Europe and in the United States when it was published. Smilla’s Sense of Snow was selected as “Book of the Year” for 1993 by Time, People, and Entertainment Weekly.

Six year old Isaiah, a Greenlander like Smilla, leaps to his death from the roof of the apartment building in which he lives with his mother. While the boy’s body is still warm, the police pronounce that the death is an accident. But Smilla, who lives in the same building and has come to love the little boy as her own, knows her young neighbor didn’t fall from the rooftop on his own. She knows that he was very afraid of heights. Also, even though there is only one set of footprints on the roof, she still suspects foul play. And her instincts are supported by her “reading” of the footprints. Knowing most of what there is to know about snow and ice, she is ably to see things other people do not – things which cannot easily be communicated, but which are still read and true.

The motive of her initial investigation lies in the kindred spirit she shares with Isaiah, both having been born in Greenland and then brought to Copenhagen after a parent died. But as she learns more, the more intent she is to find the real answer behind this boy’s death. She uncovers a series of conspiracies and cover-ups and quickly realizes that she can trust nobody.

Her investigations into who killed Isaiah and why he was killed begin in Copenhagen, but eventually lead to an adventure on an ice breaking ship and then to an island in the northern part of Greenland. The ending is very surprising.

Smilla’s Sense of Snow is an adventure in the grand tradition, with all the intrigue and occasional scenes of violence and disaster this suggests. It is suspenseful, original, and entertaining. Peter Hoeg proves that serious literature can be both entertaining and artful. A novel of the kind that only comes along very rarely.

Links to Peter Hoeg’s books at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon CAN.

Tagged as: book review, Danish author, fiction, mystery, Peter Hoeg