This novel can be read on two levels: as a sci-fi/mystery story, and as a discourse on the maginalization of the native (Inuit) people of Greenland by the Danish. The eponymous narrator, Smilla Jaspersen, is half-Inuit, half-Danish, and thus is the ultimate outsider. Indeed, while being interviewed by the police, she is asked "....is there any association or organization that you have not been kicked out of?..." to which she replies that as far as she knows, she is still listed in the census! She has had a hard life, but is stubborn and combative; she and Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone probably would see eye-to--eye on a lot of things!

The story begins with a young boy, a neighbor and friend of Smilla's, falling off the roof of the apartment building where they lived. The questions are: fell/pushed ? and Why? Smilla, happens to be a world-class expert on snow, and knows about tracking as part of her Inuit heritage. One look at the tracks in the snow convinces her that this is a case of murder, and when the police don't move fast enough, she starts to investigate on her own. Mistake! The rest of the book is how she finds out "who dunnit" and why. The quest is crazily violent, like a script for one Road Runner against 25 Wiley Coyotes. From another point of view, it could be the basis of a great, hyper-violent video game! In the end, Smilla does find out the Who and Why of the crime, after a trip to Northern Greenland by icebreaker. We don't explicitly see how she will get back, but no doubt she will find a way. At this level, the book is a page-turner, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

The other aspect of this book is its portrayal of the relations between the Inuit Greenlanders, both in Greenland and in Denmark, of which Greenland is a protectorate. The Danes are shown as treating them with contempt and exploiting them whenever it suits the Danish purposes. The writing reminds one of Conrad's Heart of Darkness or Victory. One wonders if Hoeg simply got tired of hearing his fellow Danes rebuke other Europeans, (French, British, Belgians, Americans) for their mistreatment of indigenous peoples, and decided to write a book to make them pipe down? He certainly has accomplished that!

In summary, this is a great book, well worth reading and re-reading.

I've counted six authors to whose prose Hoeg's has been compared, just in reading the first page of reviews here. They are all, to a one, terrible comparisons. The one I expected and, inexorably, found, was the comparison to Hemingway. This is because the prose is genuinely hard-hitting. But Hemingway's is not so. Hemingway's prose is studiedly hard-hitting. In other words, Hemingway's prose is a sham. Smilia, as narrator, is anything but a Hemingway character, standing aside watching bullfights with sadistic pleasure. Hoeg/Smilia is like the polar bear Smilia describes as being the only animal that does no grow tense with the rigor of the flight/fright reaction because it has never had any natural enemies. So you don't expect the punches when they land, as you do with Hemingway. The first droll punch is landed at the beginning of chapter Three, "It's the kind of day that might make you wonder about the meaning of life, and discover that there is none." Nice. And, lest you let your guard down, another roundhouse is delivered unexpectedly several pages later as Smilia describes her relation with her father, "And the mood he brought with him, which was the sum of the feelings he had for my mother; The same kind of soothing warmth that you might expect to find in a nuclear reactor." Another nice one, Smilia. These nice jabs are in the first hundred pages in the first, and best, part of the book, The City, where Hoeg has Smilia as narrator pull off the impressive feat of giving you the background of her life while weaving her way through a maze of questions and emotions.

On the other hand, Hoeg is no Conrad. Smilia's introspective musings have their limits and limitations. By the second part, The Sea, one begins to become bored with Smilia's shipmates attempting to toss her into the drink every few pages, inevitably overcome, of course, by Smilia's omnicompetence at getting herself out of each and every scrape with a display of a new set of skills. As for the ending, about which many here complain, I would have been sorely disappointed had Hoeg NOT left us in limbo. But people (Amazon reviewers included) prefer Hollywood endings. Thus the frustration vented here.

There are any number of Smilia's musings which I could set down here. They add spice and nuance to what would otherwise be a typical taut, suspense thriller. While not exactly an intellectual, Smilia is nothing if not cerebral. And readers who prefer not to think best look elsewhere. But I can't quote them all. I think the most indicative cerebration, the one that summarises Smilia's outlook and perspective throughout the book, her constant challenging of the reader and herself is the following:

"Deep inside I know that trying to figure things out leads to blindness, that the desire to understand has a built-in brutality that erases what you seek to comprehend. Only experience is sensitive."

I had fun reading this book, rolling with the punches, learning much about natural phenomena and the worlds of Greenland and Denmark. But I don't feel particularly enlightened after putting it down. It's better than the pseudo-literary: Hemingway. But it's not a work of art: Conrad.

Still, a very enjoyable read - especially the first section - with fast, at times splendid prose that is deft on its feet. Recommended for all those who love this sort of thing, are equipped with minds and aren't afraid of descriptions of parasitic worms.

Smilla's Sense of Snow is a 1992 novel by Danish author Peter Høeg translated into English by Tiina Nunnally. Smilla Qaaviqaaq Jaspersen, is in her mid-thirties; the daughter of a female Inuit guide and a wealthy Danish doctor. After her mother's death she was moved to Copenhagen by dad and for a while she leads a troublesome youth. When the story opens she is in the city of Christianshavn living in an apartment complex where she befriends a young neighbor Isaiah, the son of an alcoholic widowed mother.

Isaiah seemingly falls to his death from the rooftop leaving only a single set of footprints in the snow. Smilla, who had spent a lot of her youth growing up in Greenland, the daughter of a native, has a "Sense of Snow" and tells the authorities that there is something disconcerting about the footfalls. The police dismiss her out of hand leaving Smilla to look into the circumstances surrounding the child's death on her own. The police quickly become hostile and warn her to cease and desist her examinations.

She continues probing with the help of a neighbor Peter, a mechanic, who had cultivated his own relationship with the boy. Smilla begins an affair with Peter much against her inner voices that have never learned to trust. The investigation turns up a conspiracy that takes her back to Greenland and leaves her suspicious of everyone around her.

The story, unfortunately, stops abruptly leaving this reader unfulfilled. Guessing the ending stopped being a genre I could handle when I grew too old for children's "Choose Your Own Adventure" books. I loved the book all the way through but the Perils of Pauline ending just wasn't my cup of tea.

This mystery novel puts you into the mind of a middle aged aimless math/science aficionado, with a pedigree unmatched by any heroine in my life's reading. On confronting the death of a child she had befriended, she recognizes what the authorities are blind to; a nefarious act involved. This ignites an obsession that plays out through a incredibly imaginative plot, setting evolution, and cast of characters. For us readers of English, the translation of this novel is amazing. There is almost a poetry in so many of the story's reflective passages. Unlike the "page turner" by which thrillers are often labeled, this one you slow down and savor the way words are used.

This novel was unlike any I have ever read. The main character Smilia shares center stage with Ice which we learn an awfully lot about. Hoeg is very knowledgeable about many technical subjects, human nature, Denmark/Greenland politics and the Inuits which makes the novel more interesting on multiple levels than other literary mysteries. Smilia, a precursor to Lisbeth, is an admirable, complex character with a complex history and relationships. Her perceptions give the book pith and weight beyond the labyrinthine plot. The novel's tone was colder and more technical than I usually like but this proved to be an intentional choice of Hoeg's to express theme. Other Hoeg books are completely different. Hoeg is a true artist with many gifts in his writing bag. I recommend this book for those looking for something different about a different part of the world. Hoeg is critical of Denmark and paints a complex picture few Americans will expect. I haven't encountered such a knowledgeable, insightful mystery in a long time.

I just finished re-reading 'Smilla's Sence of Snow', after first reading it about 30 years ago when it was first published. This book has always captivated me and has led me to become something of an Arctic-ophile. Any fictional book set in the Arctic (or Antarctic) is one that I need to read, and I attribute much of it to Smilla.

This is a difficult book to read. I took my time, and was often searching backward (thank you, Kindle) to refresh my memory on a character. It's a complicated story with (some would say) an unsatisfying ending. But I love Smilla. Her humanity, her awkwardness, her intelligence, her tenacity. I'm so happy for having acquainted myself with her again, and I won't wait so long to re-read this book next time.

Both author and translator are extraordinarily talented. I found myself highlighting passage after passage in this book just for the sheer beauty of the writing. Consider this description of how the sea freezes: "The water grows viscous and tinged with pink, like a liqueur of wild berries. A blue frog of frost smoke detaches itself from the surface of the water and drifts across the mirror. Up out of the dark sea the cold now pulls a rose garden, a white blanket of blossoms formed from salt and frozen water."

It is also worth noting that petite scientist Smilla is the angriest thriller protagonist I have ever encountered, once she gets going. She makes Dirty Harry look like Charlie Brown by comparison. The novel builds, methodically and with increasing speed, toward a thunderous climax.

As several readers have noted, the tinge of science fiction toward the end of the narrative seems extraneous and unnecessary, but the book is so strong in every other respect that I didn't mind at all.

(256 pages in my 1993 PB Dell Edition, although already by p. 161 it starts to go gently downhill), and you'll feel your time was well invested.

From then onwards, ... .

The plot is summarized too many times, in this page's "Editorial Reviews", and by fellow reviewers, for me to repeat it here.

I was utterly fascinated by all the snow and ice lore contained in the book, even after it starts turning sour. Thus, I don't regret having read it. But:

1) The plot, as it develops, is both ill-thought out and absurd, both as a mystery/thriller, as biological extrapolation, and as a hint of unknown phenomena. If you want speculations about the cosmos, read "hard" SF. Also, the narration's unfolding is jarring: characters are needlessly developed and then abruptly disappear from the story; two reappear (one so implausibly as to totally defy any common sense) at the end.

2) I can't bear spoiled brats (even if 37 years old) like insufferable quasi-midget superwoman Smilla, who can do everything, has read everything, but can't get over her emigration from Greenland to Denmark when she was twelve, and the taunts the Danish teenagers subjected her to (she's half Inuit, and dark). Gosh, how many people emigrated and were uprooted and discriminated against, but got over it, and more importantly dindn't make life miserable for their guiltless fathers in order to seek an outlet for their frustrations?

3) Smilla (and also Hoeg) want to dazzle the reader with their erudition. Every situation is interlaced with philosophico-mathematical ruminations totally unrelated to what's happening: for example, in pp. 114/115, to explain to a perhaps future lover, who's cooking a delicious dinner for them, why she's afraid to go to jail, Smilla launches herself into a page-long dissertation about the number system, luckily stopping at the complex (what if she had gone on to the hyperreals and ... ?). This fake profundity may impress some readers in the short term, but to me, 468 pages of it were very irritating (somewhat akin to reading Lacan's disgressions on his "discovery" that for example [(-1) exp ½] equals the male organ), although everything she says in those 2 pages is correct and makes sense, suggesting that Hoeg in this particular case knows what he's writing about.

But in p. 458/59, entering a cave full of stalactites and stalagmites, she describes a series of scientific papers on details of their formation, ending with a fictitious one she coauthored, which "demonstrates" (with an absolutely unnecessary formula, obviously inserted to impress the laymen with demeaning and dishonest showmanship) how to calculate ... the mass of a cylinder! If anyone in the real world tried to publish anything containing such obvious nonsense (ie: the derivation of an elementary formula known for more than 2,000 years) anywhere except in a high school textbook, she would be laughed-at to death, totally discredited as a scientist/expert, and kicked out of any institution. So here Hoeg doesn't know what he's writing about, or didn't interpret what his advisors told him. And if here, why not elsewhere in the book, the fascinating snow and ice lore included?

So, unless you're real keen about those two materials -or empathize with Larsson's Salander character, who is however mercifully not prone to unwarranted metaphysical speculation-, don't buy, on pain of coming down with a severe case of Smilla (and Hoeg) dislikitis.

Ottimo se pensi che lo ricevi direttamente a casa

Alles PERFEKT!!!

Easy to read but a complex plot about snow and why it was crucial to the outcome and to the discovery of the solution.

Intriguing and absorbing read. The language is good, the writing easy to get into. There were a couple of bits that were not what I had anticipated, but I won't ruin the story for you. You get drawn into it, and it's taken me a week to get it out of my brain. Like Salanger, but the ultimate snow expert. It will be more than you expect.

Good book.