Product Description

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....

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32232 in Books
• Published on: 1995-10-01
• Released on: 1995-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780385315142
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
In this international bestseller, Peter Høeg successfully combines the pleasures of literary fiction with those of the thriller. Smilla Jaspersen, half Danish, half Greenlander, attempts to understand the death of a small boy who falls from the roof of her apartment building. Her childhood in Greenland gives her an appreciation for the complex structures of snow, and when she notices that the boy's footprints show he ran to his death, she decides to find out who was chasing him. As she attempts to solve the mystery, she uncovers a series of conspiracies and cover-ups and quickly realizes that she can trust nobody. Her investigation takes her from the streets of Copenhagen to an icebound island off the coast of Greenland. What she finds there has implications far beyond the death of a single child. The unusual setting, gripping plot, and compelling central character add up to one of the most fascinating and literate thrillers of recent years.

From Publishers Weekly
The title of this quiet, absorbing suspense novel by a Danish author only suggests the intriguing story it tells. After young Isaiah Christiansen falls from a snow-covered roof in present-day Copenhagen, something about his lone rooftop tracks--and the fact that the boy had a fear of heights--obsesses Smilla Qaavigaaq Jaspersen, a woman who had befriended him. Smilla is 37, unmarried, and, like Isaiah, part of Denmark's small Eskimo/Greenlander community. She is also a minor Danish authority on the properties and classification of ice. Her search for what had frightened the boy leads her to uncover information about his father's mysterious death on a secret expedition to Greenland, a mission funded by a powerful Danish corporation involved in a strange conspiracy stretching back to WW II. As related in Smilla's sober, no-nonsense narration, the plot acquires credibility even as its details become more bizarre. While the novel will probably be compared to Gorky Park , Hoeg has much more to offer, both in terms of his impeccable literary style and in the glimpses he provides of an utterly foreign culture. Its chief virtue, however, is the narrator: Smilla is never less than believable in her contradictions--caustic, caring, thoughtful, impulsive, determined and above all, rebellious. Smoothly translated by Nunnally, this is Hoeg's third novel, but the first to appear in English. A dark, taut, compelling story, it's a real find. 40,000 first printing; $50,000 ad/promo; BOMC selection.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
YA-A compelling and suspenseful adventure about a solitary 37-year-old Greenlander, an unemployed glaciologist who lives in Copenhagen. Smilla Jaspersen is caught between the pull of her Inuit roots and the restrictions and demands of the modern industrial world. The story begins when her six-year-old neighbor falls from a snow-covered roof, and it is declared an accidental death. She and the boy were close friends, and she was keenly aware of his abnormal fear of heights. This, together with her keen Inuit understanding of snow, causes her to doubt that it was an accident. When she questions the local authorities they are not interested, and she begins to make inquiries on her own. Her investigation takes her from shipyards, corporate headquarters, and the dark back streets of the Danish capital to a secretive voyage along the icy Greenland coast. Mysterious characters, violent encounters, and an intriguing puzzle propel the story along. The final scenes rapidly accelerate in action and suspense. It's a rare thriller that has such a strong, fascinating female protagonist, but this book also excels in story and characterization. It's a winner.
Penny Stevens, Fairfax County Public Library,
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

A thinking person's thriller
Peter Hoeg proves that serious literature can be both entertaining and artful. On the surface, "Smilla's Sense of Snow" is genre fiction. But dig a little deeper, and there is a character study of great sensitivity, a setting with symbolic value and profound themes about loss. Unlike other densely-plotted thrillers, this book rewards re-reading

Fantastic first two-thirds, abominably bad ending
Authors are all too often struck by the dreaded 'Two-thirds syndrome' -- the problem of how to maintain the suspense of a good book until the very end. All too often, about two-thirds of the way into a novel, you can almost hear the question reverberating around an author's head: "How on earth am I going to end this?" One of the best examples of this must be Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, a mystery which also does a superlative job of charting the alienation of a Greenlander in Copenhagen. Just as you're gearing up for a fantastic conclusion, the author turns it into a cheap spy novel and ruins much of what he has achieved. I am still puzzled by how bad the ending of this book is when you consider what went before

A book to read over and over, to enjoy on many levels
I read a review of Smilla in the New York Times Book Review the year it was published and was completely intrigued by it. I found it on a clearance rack for around 2 dollars a few years later, and have been reading it ever since. It is one of the few books that I take wherever I travel. Smilla is not always a nice person; most of the time her past envelopes her present and makes her almost unlikeable. The other characters in the novel, the mechanic, her father, the coroner and the blind linguist are so well written that you begin to feel that you know them. I can't agree with the 2/3's assessment,because I find it gripping to the end, even though I have read it many times. The atmosphere of Copenhagen in winter, the language of snow and ice, and the mystery surrounding a young boy's death may not move ahead like an American mystery, but the slow unraveling of the plot is perfect for a novel set in a country where life is lived at a different pace than ours.