Rating: 
Summary: A woman you'd love to hate
Review: The novel is written in a first-person voice, a narrative of a 37 year-old, half-Danish and half-Inuit single female named Smilla. Smilla is determined (she follows the murderers of a little boy she was fond of to the outskirts of the arctic), cynical (nothing impresses her other than dry, cold factoids such as the formations of ice), science-oriented (she authored scientific papers on the growth rate of stalactite; she reads Euclid's Elements to the little boy), has a thing against authority (she had been expelled from every organization she got admitted to), and downright wicked (she will cut open a wound in you without hesitation once she is determined that you are her enemy). But it is really her keen, frank observations that one gets attracted to. Her eyes and tongue would slice and dice everything she encounters and would not spare even herself. Through her narratives one is able to construct an all too humane and ultimately convincing human being. This is what keeps one reading, wanting for more. The plot, on the other hand, disguised as a mystery, serves nothing more than a glue to group together Smilla's manifold observations. Do not expect much from the plot.
Rating:
Summary: Mr Hoeg's Sense of Characterization
Review: Some writers create such great characters that you don't care if the story line is a little murky. My favorite example of this is Raymond Chandler's THE BIG SLEEP: I have read the book and seen the movie multiple times, and still have difficulty sorting it all out. Some of Dickens' work falls into this category, as well as some recent mysteries, such as AN INSTANCE OF THE FINGERPOST.If the ultimate measures of a work of fiction are that you care about the people and you want to know what happens next, then SMILLA is a masterpiece. To this, I would have to add the novel's sense of place: Copenhagen and the sea off the West Coast of Greenland are sketched in few but deft strokes. Ultimately, it is Smilla herself who is the star attraction. Half Dane, half Inuit (Eskimo), she thinks like a little of both. The Danish half is something of a scientist, while the Inuit half has a sense of snow and ice that is alien to anyone south of the Arctic Circle. While afraid of water, Smilla thinks nothing of taking a stroll on the ice in the harbor of Copenhagen, instinctively sidestepping weaknesses which would plunge her toward an icy [demise]. Not since LA FEMME NIKITA have I seen such a dangerous woman in a fight. Her quick disabling of her father's girlfriend Benja and an over-inquisitive crewman aboard the ship KRONOS are memorable. At the same time, her feelings for the Inuit boy Isaac are sincere and credible, such that I almost felt as if the author were female. On the other hand, the ending is not satisfying -- a little too Indiana Jones-y for my taste -- and that while Hoeg's characterization of the main characters is on the mark, he creates too many subsidiary characters, particularly in the Denmark scenes, and too many complications from which to extricate himself successfully. That being said, I look forward to see the direction that Hoeg takes with his future works. Sure it's not perfect, but it's such a fun read that it'll whet your appetite for more.
Rating: 
Summary: Weird, but good
Review: This was a really new book, something surprising, a little bit disconcerting. I saw the movie first and then the book (see the movie! Gabriel Byrne rocks as the mechanic, Julia Ormond is a fantastic, tough, smart Smilla, and it's actually faithful to the book) and I found the book just as memorable as the movie. The writing is dense and thought-provoking: Smilla's judgment of everything she sees around her is relevant to everyone and completely uncompromising, and it slaps you in the face.
Rating:
Summary: Exquisite
Review: This is one of the most wonderful books I have ever read. Yes, Smilla is a strange woman, but perhaps no stranger than any other human being if they are truly honest with themselves. Smilla questions her own humanity and her capacity to love, but answers those doubts in her actions. It is this very honesty combined with her love of snow that makes this book so intriguing. The passages about her chidhood are quite poignant and you can really feel the little girl inside the disappointed adult remembering her mother and understand the effects of loss and cultural schizophrenia. What is most remarkable is that a man tapped so deeply into the emotions that I suspect many women feel about themselves, their childhood and their attempts at adult relationships. The ending was not so much a disappointment as a deferral, as though someone came into the room, told the writer he had to pack to leave on a UFO and had 5 minutes to write the ending. However, in his defense, I truly did not expect Smilla and the Mechanic to go home, get married and have a few kids. The period spent on the ship is more technical and not quite as emotionally intimate as the earlier chapters, and felt credibility was stretched a bit, but it was still a wonderful story.
Interestingly, the temperature outside while reading this book was about 60 degrees. Despite polarfleece, heavy socks and a down comforter, I still couldn't get warm. This is a book that stays in your thoughts long after you put it down.
Rating: 
Summary: There is something rotten in Copenhagen, and in this book...
Review: I read Hoeg's novel in English when it was published in 1993, and plan to one day get around to reading it in Danish. But whichever language you read it in, once Smilla gets on that damn ship, I'm sorry to say, it's all down hill, and the ending is one of the worst I can recall reading - so unsatisfying it will make ya weep for what could have been a superb work. I have the book on my shelf and never tire of reading Part One (The City), but never read any further - I can't bear to see Smilla and the story turn into a silly blockbuster film blue print. Part One however is truly beautiful, and I get both angry, sad, and incredibly homesick (where IS home when you're an immigrant?) You will feel transported to Copenhagen in winter, and you will be given an brutally honest non-fairytale angle on Denmark, including the horrific ways in which the Danes messed things up really bad for the Greenlanders, introducing alcoholism, violence, unemployment, pollution and other delights from the "civilized" world. In Copenhagen, you will see Greenlanders, like Isaiah's mother Juliane, sitting on city and park benches, drinking up their welfare money, a plastic bag full of Tuborg beer bottles, their faces ravaged by sad lives in a city where they should never have set foot in. Perhaps Hoeg thought he would reach a wider audience if he wrote of these issues in a mystery/thriller format, and he obviously did, it became a bestseller, but I think he did himself and the reader a great disservice, as evidenced by the many amazon[.com] reviewers who loathed Part Two and Three, and were very disappointed by the ending. If you're a masochist - rent the movie, ouch, oh, ouch, oh. Three stars go to the book as a whole, five stars go to Part One
Rating:
Summary: A Classic for All Time Makes a Modest Debut
Review: This is one of the best books I have ever read. Why do I think so? Because the book tells a story that is myth/fairytale/saga, with characters and situations that may not be logical and may be a little beyond real, but that make complete sense and have a ring of the profoundest truth--like a dream. Surreal. That's a popular word today. Look at a surrealist painting by Dali or the paintings of Frieda Kahlo--they reach in and touch at the deepest part of the subconscious, where the archetypes sleep. SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW is like the myths and fairytales that have survived the Age of Reason and the Industrial Revolution and the Computer Age. The book is exactly like the ancient legends and fairy tales that live on and on, because they talk about things that are very deep and elemental. SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW is just like MOBY DICK--but I could never relate to MOBY DICK, and I can relate to this book in the way that MOBY DICK must have taken hold of many people. The book stirs my unconscious without my conscious mind even having to participate, in the way that a Grimm's fairy tale or one of those wonderful Greek myths does. The image of the sea, of the great, huge white whale speaks to us in MOBY DICK. So do the indomitable icebergs and howling blizzards of the frozen North, and so does the monster that lies beneath. To me, SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW is about how modern man is destroying what is best in the world with science and technology. I feel very deeply that this is so, and it causes me great pain and sadness, and this book stirred all of those emotions and gave them life and shape and imagery. One of my favorite images is Smilla as a grown woman, remembering nursing at her mother's breast, and how beautiful she remembered her mother to be, and the nature of that beauty. What is more elemental and natural, and removed from modern European man, than a Greenlandic Eskimo pausing to suckle her infant during a hunting trip? What is more removed from modern life than an Eskimo traveling over ice and snow and glaciers to hunt for food, orienting herself by developing intimate knowledge of every detail of snow and ice, plus a special, unexplainable instinct? Smilla remembers life with her mother, living as a Greenlandic Eskimo, as a Paradise, even though life in Greenland is one of the harshest on the earth for humans, and even though the life of the Greenlandic Eskimo is often very short and fraught with danger. And yet being torn from that life was the worst thing that ever happened to her and being part of that life was the best thing that ever happened to her. Paradise Lost. That is what SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW is about to me. What does that feel like to someone who has never been an Eskimo? SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW evokes that. Who are the enemies of one who has lost paradise? Read SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW.
Rating:
Summary: Great book without an ending
Review: I had nothing to read and picked this up in the 1 dollar box. At first I didn't like it, but before I could toss it I found that the writing and the character of Smilla pulled me helplessly in. I couldn't stop reading despite some of the long extraneous descriptions of things you could care less about...I couldn't wait to read again each day. Smilla was a great, original and believable protagonist. I liked her and her inward struggles with family and misanthropy and then came the last page where for a few moments I'd thought that the book had been damaged and was missing pages...but then I realized that that was _it_ and felt incredibly cheated... What the hell was this author thinking ?
Rating:
Summary: If you are able to concentrate ...
Review: To understand what is going in this novel you have to read every line of every page from the first page to the last page without blinking. If you blink, you are going to lose track of the story and the characters. The narrator is also most unconvincing as a female. Therefore, although Hoeg writes well, I wouldn't recommend this novel as a good read.
Rating:
Summary: Not your typical Robin Cook-ish whodunit.
Review: It was a cold, bleak November day. The noiseless, lackluster streets of Copenhagen lie covered in blankets of freshly-fallen snow. Why, if you could imagine the scene, you would almost be tempted to describe it as "tranquil." But tranquil it isn't, for somewhere along one of these whitened, desolate streets of Copenhagen lies the lifeless body of six-year-old Isaiah Christiansen. Ruled an "accidental" death by the local police officials who were convinced that the young boy slipped and fell while playing on the roof of his apartment building, Isaiah was eventually laid to rest. But in the mind of Smilla Jasperson, Isaiah's close friend and neighbor, there were still too many unanswered questions evolving the little boy's death. From day one, thirty-seven-year-old Smilla never believed that Isaiah's death was a mere accident. Telltale signs left by Isaiah's footprints on the snowy rooftop had all but convinced Smilla that little Isaiah--who was petrified of heights and would never have willingly gone up on the roof in the first place--had met up with foul play and she was determined to seek out the truth even if it killed her. What really happened up there on the roof that blustery November day? Who could possibly have wanted this innocent child dead? And why? What secrets did Isaiah carry with him to his grave? Readers will slowly but surely find the answers to these questions (and more) as they embark on an endless and treacherous journey alongside Smilla as she puts forth all efforts in searching for the truth behind Isaiah's untimely death. This novel was the first I've ever read by the Danish writer, Peter Hoeg. I bought it after a friend of mine (whom I admire for his exquisite taste in literature) highly recommended it. Having read the book, the verdict is in: it was an absolutely sensational read! I was pleasantly taken aback by Hoeg's style of writing, which can only be described as "profoundly descriptive" (I know more about the dynamics of ice and snow than I ever dreamed of knowing!), and "culturally educative" (I now know as much about Copenhagen and Greenland than I do my own homeland!). I enjoy a good mystery, but for those looking for a Robin Cook-ish whodunit, you won't find it here. Hoeg has a very esoteric style of writing and throughout the 500 pages of his novel, he pens extremely detailed passages that may put some readers to sleep. Hoeg weaves an intricate trail of suspense that expands from the cold, desolate streets of
Copenhagen to the frigid waters off the coast of western Greenland. The character, Smilla, fits so easily into the icy environments illustrated in this book, as she is as cold and emotionless as the snow in which she studies. Because of the way her character is portrayed--apathetic, downright [witchy], and fiercely independent, I found it hard to like Smilla although I admired her
spunk and rooted her efforts. The brief sexual encounters with her lover, the mechanic, were
weirdly erotic, yet it was a nice surprise to see that the tough, hard-as-nails Smilla Jasperson has a soft, feminine side to her nature. The novel was "bouncy" at times in that it was often a challenge keeping up with the many
unscrupulous characters and the roles each played in Isaiah's death. I got dizzy trying to stay focused through some parts of the book as Hoeg jumped from one event to the next without
any lucid connections. Whew! What a rollercoaster ride! The ending was a bit of a disappointment and left me with the big question of what happened to the villains! At least we find out who killed Isaiah and why. Maybe Hoeg deliberately left the ending open like that in case he decides to write a sequel. Read this book only if you don't mind long, heavily-detailed, drawn-out thrillers. All-in-all, this is a very good novel. I can't wait to read Hoeg's other book, "Borderliners." If it's anything like this one, I'm sure I won't be disappointed!
Rating:
Summary: An Intelligent and Fast-Paced Mystery
Review: Smilla's Sense of Snow is an intelligent and fast-paced mystery. Although the many subplots and diversions are all ultimately tied to the main plot, they are, at times, quite confusing. I thought the character of Smilla Jasperson was quite well-drawn, although she sometimes accomplished physical feats the seemed impossible. I didn't particularly like Smilla, but I did find her both memorable and unique. Sadly, the character of the mechanic, who was quite fascinating, was terribly sketchy. In my opinion, this book would have benifitted greatly had the mechanic been more fully fleshed-out. Personally, I enjoyed reading all the details of the snow and ice, but there were so many of them I think some readers were no doubt bored with it all and probably began skimming over them. This would have been a mistake because, to some extent, it was necessary to understand these details in order to understand the book. I've noticed that many readers had problems with the ending of this book. I didn't. I thought the ending fit the story perfectly. It was quite complicated and would have been confusing to anyone who wasn't following the story carefuly, but it was perfect. For me, the most annoying thing about this book was the translation. I found many words used out of context and worse, meaningless phrases and sentence fragments thrown in here and there. It was quite annoying. The author is such a skilled and intelligent writer, I can't believe this was done deliberately in the original Danish. If you like classy, intelligent thrillers and are willing to absorb a wealth of detail, you're sure to love this book. Readers looking for something light and relaxing should probably skip this one...at least for now.
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