Product Description

One snowy day in Copenhagen, six-year-old Isaiah falls to his death from a city rooftop. The police pronounce it an accident. But Isaiah's neighbour, Smilla, 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17899 in Books
• Published on: 1996-04-04
• Original language: Danish
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

About the Author
Born in 1957, Peter Hoeg published his first novel in 1988, having followed various callings - dancer, actor, fencer, sailor, mountaineer - before turning seriously to writing. With his second novel, Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, he has become an internationally acclaimed. Harvill also publish The Woman and the Ape, Borderliners, The History of Danish Dreams and Tales of the Night.

Customer Reviews

A shiver of pleasure
Peter Høeg's Smilla is a fairly unique sort of person. Her experiences have made her wise in the ways of snow and ice and cynical and distrustful of people. An Inuit upbringing in the cold climate of Greenland had ill-prepared her for the chilly atmosphere of Danish society when her father took her there after her mother died. At 37 she is single, solitary and unemployed - even though she's one of the world's leading experts on ice and snow. She has just one friend that she loves: a small boy, Isaiah, who is, like her, a Greenlander out of place in Denmark. When Isaiah falls to his death from a rooftop, Smilla knows it cannot have been a simple accident. She can read his footprints in the snow and she knew the child well. The authorities cannot be allowed to write it off as an accidental death so she sets out to discover what really happened.

The feeling of snow and ice: the cold, the motion and gradual stiffening of the sea, the changing quality of the light - are conveyed so that, with a little imagination, it's possible to feel it. I put on an extra jumper and turned the heating up a bit. The description of Smilla's journey from the desolation of the lonely city to the desolation of the ice fields west of Greenland generate strong visual and emotional impressions. The plot is quite complicated to follow and there are a few coincidences that might require the brief suspension of disbelief. It can also be rather a bumpy ride for an English speaking reader because of the many Danish and Greenlandic words and names that can slow you down as you try to puzzle out how they should be pronounced. Even so, it's a splendid book, full of tragic and colourful characters, most of them deeply or slightly flawed (even the goodies) but all of them interesting and plausible.

I highly recommend this book.

Smilla is my all-time favourite literary character
The original, witty, intelligent, unconventional character of Smilla Jasperson is well drawn and quite unlike any other character I have ever met in life or fiction... and yet, given her background, she just could be real.

Apart from the wonderful Smilla, I was fascinated with the descriptions of Greenland, the people who survive in its hostile climate and its relationship with (a largely unsympathetic) Denmark.

There is also a very exciting and intricate plot which keeps you guessing until the end. Clues are introduced to the reader all the way through and because of this, it is not a book to pick up and put down over a long period of time. In fact I wish I could have had the time to read it in just one or two sessions. I also wish I had made notes on the various characters as they were introduced because you tend to forget where they came in: Partly due to the complex nature of the plot-weaving and partly the unfamiliar Scandinavian names.

Breathtaking...
As one other reviewer has commented, it does take about 200 pages or so to pick up the various strands which constitute the thread of narrative in this marvellous book.

Until I read this novel, I had never considered the multifacetedness of snow and ice. A multifacetnedness, moreover, which is reflected in the nature of our hero, Miss Smilla Jaspersen, by turns kind, generous, giving, understanding, gritty, determined, forthwright, violent, gentle, humorous, intelligent etc etc. She is wholly unique, and just fabulous.

To summarise this as a murder mystery or crime thriller is to do it a severe injustice. So much wisdom is here, so much raw human nature, that it is possible to become a little overwhelmed by it. However, Hoeg steers you through it all, as competently as a seasoned sea captain. And, despite its occasional brutality, on is left with an extraordinary sense of beauty and conscious of the value of human life. We should reflect on these more often, Hoeg appears to be saying, and I cannot help but agree.