Rating: 
Summary: Dark and compelling
Review:
Smilla Jaspersen is half American and half Eskimo/Greenlander living in Denmark. She is 37, unmarried, and filled with a quiet caustic rage that overflows occasionally into determined action. She is also an expert, thanks to her Inuit mother, on the properties of snow and the significance of tracks left in snow.
Smilla is befriended by a pitiful child, Isiah, and the novel begins with the discovery of his body on the ground below a 7-story building, from the roof of which he apparently fell. But Smilla isn't so sure. For one thing, he was afraid of heights. For another, it appears that a needle biopsy of his leg muscle was taken after his death. But most of all, there are his tracks, only his, in the snow, but Smilla can see his panic, his running, his fear in the properties of those tracks.
Smilla is nothing if not determined, and she embarks on a quest to discover the truth behind the child's death, a quest that nearly costs her her own life.
Excellent, nail-biting suspense and powerful, literary-quality writing. Superb.
Rating:
Summary: Profoundly beautiful...
Review: Even those writing laudatory reviews, here, ding this truly superior work for having a psychologically, rather than literally, explosive conclusion. I can only suggest that Hoeg is an author for whom theme is ever unfolding through his characters, and it is the characters to whom we must look here.The character of Smilla, the heroine of this novel, is developed with such nurturing and painstaking clarity and depth that she is breathtaking. She is so sharply defined that even the remarkable mystery in which we meet her becomes secondary. This book is a work of art of the highest order and it may be read for style alone. But make no mistake, this is a compelling story, which is intellectually demanding of the reader. "Smilla's Sense..." is a story of the strength and determination required by social outsiders in sussing out the underlying motivations of people involved in normative systems of control, and protecting themselves from those systems and the people maintaining them. This novel is about power and survival. Like all of Hoeg's other novels, especially "Borderliners", "Smilla" takes us on a journey describing characters traveling the real and emotional dialectic of moving away from the social center as they are drawn into a deeper understanding of its aims and of its archetypes. Smilla discovers not just facts, but the mythos underlying them. "Smilla's Sense of Snow" is an ontology of the marginalized psyche interlaced within a remarkable story of the lengths to which a system can be bent towards the individual ambition for power and control. I hate to make comparisons, but a good summer's serious reading list might include this novel with titles such as Morrison's "Song of Solomon", Eco's "Foucault's Pendelum" and DeLillo's "Libra".
Rating: 
Summary: Good storyline and plot twists
Review: Smilla's search for the reason why a young boy runs to his death while the authorities rule it an unfortunate accident makes for a good story. The most interesting and flowing parts of this book surrounded the characters in action. The development of most the characters is too brief causing acceptance of them versus getting to know them. The scientific and environmental detail while necessary and compelling at some points unfortunately more often detracts from the storyline. A little more editing of the story would have helped, and yet at times the text jumps forward causing the reader to fill in the blanks. These inconsistencies are a bit distracting. Overall this not a bad read, I just was expecting more due to the hype about best book of the year. Plot twists are intriguing and creative. Do enjoy this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Not What it Could Have Been
Review: The author weaves a complex tale and stirs some powerful images. Chock full of historical and scientific tidbits, the books falters in character development. The actions and motives of the major players are highly implausible, and glossed over too frequently. And there is no plot resolution at all. I was listening to this book on tape and I was certain there had to be more...but there isn't. A good read, albeit flawed, and entirely unfinished. Write your own ending!
Rating:
Summary: TAUT AND COMPELLING
Review: I probably wouldn't have read this book if it had not been gifted to me at Christmas by my best friend - she had seen the film, and knowing how much I like to read, felt that it would be `right up my alley'...and once again, she was right in her judgment concerning my tastes. One of the quotes on the back cover (from The New Yorker) puts this novel `...in the league of Melville or Conrad' - while I'm not sure I would go quite that far, Høeg is a fine writer, and his talents for keeping the reader in suspense as he spins this tale are pretty impressive. The central character, Smilla, is of mixed Greenlandic and Danish parentage - and the conflicts between those two cultures, one colonial, one native, are alive within her constantly. The dialectic that exists between these two forces - which has so often transformed and rent the fabric of human society - tears at her life. She is a strong-willed, intelligent woman who is not really sure what she wants or expects from life - she trusts her instincts, but not necessarily her heart. When she comes upon the body of her six-year-old neighbor Isaiah crumpled in the snow outside their apartment building, dead from a fall from the roof, she is immediately suspicious - and when the police almost instantly rule the death an accident, Smilla's initial doubts increase. They continue to do so almost exponentially as she begins to look into the case - and her investigation leads her into one dangerous situation after another. The author balances the emotional with the sociological and the scientific elements nicely in this story - there are plenty of references to Smilla's inability to trust, and to love (and the reasons that lurk behind), background on the treatment of the Inuit people by the Danes (both in Greenland and in Denmark), and plenty of science as well. The author has done his homework. In the note about the author, it's mentioned that before turning to writing, he worked as a professional dancer, an actor, a sailor, a fencer and a mountaineer - and it's pretty evident that he pursued these activities with attention and zeal. You can see elements from several of them within this work. The writing is intelligent, and flows very nicely - and Høeg is masterful in giving away just what he wants to give away as the story progresses. Fans of the literary thriller should give this novel a good, long look.
Rating:
Summary: Intriguing and thrilling to the end!
Review: The negative reviews on this book say more about those readers than the book itself: the reader's pleasure in this thriller IS in the intellectual guessing. It's an incredibly profound novel, pivotong on intriguiging characters, a very clever plot, fast and witty dialogue. A double cheer for the heroine too, a woman with dark depths and a thought-provoking perspective on Europeans (from me, a European). This book has a great many layers and is wonderfully written. A great read - I practically gulped it down!
Rating:
Summary: Intricate and not quite plausible
Review: This book tells the story of Smilla, a half-Inuit woman living in Copenhagen, and her investigation into why a little boy who lived in her building walked off a roof. Smilla is keenly intelligent and hard as nails. She accomplishes physical feats that would put James Bond to shame as the bad guys try to prevent her from learning what happened to the little boy. She is purposefully mysterious as she narrates her story, keeping readers puzzled about her actions and choices until she chooses to explain them. The story ends not with a bang, but a whimper, leaving the reader to figure out what happened as the plot finally drifts out to sea.
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