Peter Hoeg – Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow
This book was recommended to me several years ago, and I had never got around to reading it until recently. I am so glad I did! {thank you Rachel :)}
Originally published in 1992 and translated from the Danish, the story starts in Copenhagen, but moves across Greenland and through the icy seas of the far North Atlantic Ocean. It’s partly a detective novel, and it’s a ripping yarn – but it is also intriguingly mixed with philosophy and the political history of Greenland, delivered in a strange and melancholy ambience that is quite beautiful.
Smilla is a Greenlander. She moved to Denmark when she was young, but still struggles with her Greenlander-ness; not quite fitting with the Danish way of doing things, and yet occasionally forgetting her native tongue. Smilla befriends a small boy living in her block of units who is also a Greenlander; he subsequently dies in mysterious circumstances, and she then makes it her mission to discover the how and the why.
Reading it, I feel simultaneously detached and immersed, like I’m watching the story unfold on the ocean floor. Smilla, despite her apparent obsession with nice clothes, remains vaguely androgynous. Perhaps it’s her facility with numbers and logic; perhaps it’s her boy-scout-like abilities with snow and ice; perhaps it’s that Scandinavian remoteness that I find incomprehensible. No matter, I was fascinated.
The story increases in bizarreness to its strange conclusion. There is violence and there is occasional gore, and I must admit, there are points in the story at which I had to stretch my imagination to accommodate the plot’s likelihood. But hell, don’t let that put you off!
It is a great read.
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.
Peter Hoeg is my favourite author of all time! This book is great but he has others I loved more – my favourite is Borderliners, with the History of Danish Dreams a very close second.
Thanks so much for that Jen! I must search them out – I loved his evocative way of writing, so beautiful
Ah, I have read this book, I loved it! It is in my bookshelve, I took it in my hands a short while ago to reread it. I will soon:)
I remember this one – it’s very enjoyable, a bit of a wild ride…and I know what you mean about stretching the imagination.
I remember my mum read this book quite a few years back and recommended it to me then. I haven’t read it but really should!