This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.
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.… (more)
taz_: Charm school drop-outs Lisbeth Salander of "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" and Smilla Qaaviqaaq Jaspersen of "Smilla's Sense of Snow" strike me as unconventional soul sisters of the detective mystery. Each haunted by demons of the past, fiercely independent, armored in cynicism and misanthropy, they share a certain psychic landscape and brilliant, icy resourcefulness. If you love one, I predict you'll love the other.… (more)
I've vacillated between 1 star and 4 for this review, so settled on two. It's a truly strange book. It's a little like reading something in a language you've learnt but aren't yet comfortable with: you can understand all the words without having a clue what it's all about. I loved learning about the intimate relationship with snow that Smilla, with her Greenland heritage has. She really understands the nuances between so many differemt kinds of snow and ice.
What happens at the beginning is that a young boy whom she knows falls of a roof and dies. It's put down as an accident by the police, but Smilla smells a rat. The book tells the story of her pursuit of the truth. And I barely understood a single turn of the plot. I found Smilla strange and self-absorbed, but then finding an amiable character in this book is a fairly thankless task.
I gave up following the plot early on. But I persisted because I enjoyed learning about the people of Greenland and their uncomfortable relationship with the Danes. So that was wortwhile. As to whodunnit? No idea. See if you can find out ( )
I really enjoyed Smilla’s Sense of Snow but it was more for the atmosphere than for the story. The mystery became overly-complicated and was difficult to follow at times, and while I enjoyed several characters in the first half of the book, I didn’t like anyone (including Smilla) in the second half. But I felt like I was in the ‘cold north’ and that, combined with my love of arctic survival stories, is the reason that I enjoyed this story. ( )
"The body's pain is so paper-thin and insignificant compared to that of the mind."
This book was initially written in Danish and then translated into English. The story follows Smilla Jaspersen, a 37-year-old Greenlander living in Copenhagen. Smilla is a loner by nature, but there is one person in her life she feels a connection to, her young neighbour, Isaiah. This is revealed through a series of flashbacks, because in the novel’s opening chapter it is revealed that Isaiah has died following a fall off the snowy roof of their apartment block.
Accidental death say the police but Smilla knows the boy and moreover has a feeling for snow. She reads a different story in his snowy footprints. Isaiah wasn’t playing, he was running from something. Smilla decides to investigate this untimely death and soon realises that she has stumbled onto something much bigger than a solitary death. What's more she can read the smallest changes in ice and snow.
This novel is an entertaining mystery/thriller that IMHO has enough in it for anyone who is a fan of that particular genre but for me, the best part was learning about the history and culture of Greenland. Hoeg deftly explores the many problems of the colonization of this island nation, weaving historical context into his text. I started the novel knowing absolutely nothing about the relationship between Denmark and Greenland, so it was a interesting to learn something about their uneasy history. Hoeg’s prose is densely packed, full of information, action, and on occasion, wonderfully vivid imagery.
Coincidentally I started this on a day that it had started to snow in my own neighbourhood and if nothing else, it reminded me that British winters are rather tame in comparison to those endured in the bone-chilling arctic.
"Whining is a virus, a lethal, infectious, epidemic disease." ( )
It's freezing - an extraordinary 0 Fahrenheit - and it's snowing, and in the language that is no longer mine, the snow is qanik - big, almost weightless crystals falling in clumps and covering the ground with a layer of pulverized white frost.
Tr. 'F. David' (Tiina Nunnally, plus changes by the publisher and author), UK publication:
It is freezing, an extraordinary -18°C, and it's snowing, and in the language which is no longer mine, the snow is qanik - big, almost weightless crystals falling in stacks and covering the ground with a layer of pulverized white frost.
Det fryser ekstraordinære 18 grader celcius, og det sner, og på det sprog som ikke mere er mit, er sneen qanik, store næsten vægtløse krystaller, der falder i stabler, og dækker jorden med et lag af pulveriseret, hvid frost.
Quotations
This winter I've been able to watch the ice forming
"Even if they ripped off your arms and legs, you'd find some way to kick back,"~ Verlaine to Smilla
The bad thing about death is not that it changes the future. It's that it leaves us alone with our memories.
The number system is like human life. First you have the natural numbers. The ones that are whole and positive. The numbers of the small child. But human consciousness expands. The child discovers longing. The mathematical expression for longing is the negative numbers. The formalization of the feeling that you are missing something. Human consciousness expands and grows even more, and the child discovers the in-between spaces. Between stones, between pieces of moss on the stones, between people. And between numbers. ... That leads to fractions. Whole numbers plus fractions produce the rational numbers. Human consciousness doesn't stop there. It wants to go beyond reason. It adds an operation as absurd as the extraction of roots. And produces irrational numbers. ... It's a form of madness. Because the irrational numbers are infinite. They can't be written down. They force human consciousness out beyond the limits. And by adding irrational numbers to rational numbers, you get real numbers. ... It never stops. ... We expand the real numbers with the imaginary ones, square roots of negative numbers. these are numbers that normal human consciousness cannot comprehend. And when we add the imaginary numbers to the real numbers, we have the complex number system.
The problem with being able to hate the colonization of Greenland with a pure hatred is that, no matter what you may detest about it, the colonization irrefutably improved the material needs of an existence that was one of the most difficult in the world.
Not one day of my adult life has passed that I haven't been amazed at how poorly Danes and Greenlanders understand each other. It's worse for Greenlanders, of course. It's not healthy for the tightrope walker to be misunderstood by the person who's holding the rope. And in this century the Inuit's life has been a tightrope dance on a cord fastened at one end to the world's least hospitable land with the world's most severe and fluctuating climate, and fastened at the other end to the Danish colonial administration.
I feel the same way about my spatial freedom as I've noticed men feel about their testicles. I cradle it like a baby, and worship it as a goddess.
In the central room there are about fifty terminals. I wait for a while. When an elderly man comes in, I follow him. When he sits down, I stand behind him and pay attention. He doesn't notice me. He sits there for an hour. Then he leaves, I sit down at a free terminal and press a key. The machine prompts: Log on user ID? I type LTH3 - just as the elderly gentleman did. The machine replies: Welcome ... Your password? I type JPB. The way the elderly gentleman did. The machine replies: Welcome Mr Jens Peter Bramslev.
Last words
Tr. 'F. David' (Tiina Nunnally, plus changes by the publisher and author), UK publication:
Tell us, they'll come and say to me. So we may understand and close the case. They're wrong. It's only what you do not understand that you can come to a conclusion about. There will be no conclusion.
Fortæl os, vil de komme og sige til mig. Så vi forstår og kan afslutte. De tager fejl. Det er kun det man ikke forstår, man kan afslutte. Det kommer ikke til nogen afgørelse.
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.
▾Library descriptions
No library descriptions found.
▾LibraryThing members' description
Book description
Haiku summary
Smilla's friend is dead After falling from a roof. She investigates. (passion4reading)
)
)
Google Books — Loading...
Wikipedia in English (1)
4
What happens at the beginning is that a young boy whom she knows falls of a roof and dies. It's put down as an accident by the police, but Smilla smells a rat. The book tells the story of her pursuit of the truth. And I barely understood a single turn of the plot. I found Smilla strange and self-absorbed, but then finding an amiable character in this book is a fairly thankless task.
I gave up following the plot early on. But I persisted because I enjoyed learning about the people of Greenland and their uncomfortable relationship with the Danes. So that was wortwhile. As to whodunnit? No idea. See if you can find out (