Type of bind: Hardcover
EAN num: 9780002713337
Format: Import
ISBN number: 0002713330
Label: Harvill
Manufacturer: Harvill
Page Count: 416
Printing Date: 1993
Publishing house: Harvill
Studio: Harvill
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Rated by buyers 
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Are you a congressman of any parliament of the world? Worried about your country's exaggerated defense expenses? Worry no more, we got the solution: SMILLA! A one-woman army, all by herself! A mixture of Superman without cryptonite and the old Tyson of the eighties, without any military training. Forget about polluting aircraft carriers and ugly superbombers, who needs them? With Smylla alone you will win all wars. And the expenses on weaponry? Ha! Not even a switch-blade knife. She wins each-and-every physical struggle single-handedly. Even if she asks a billion dollars a month. Compare that with your defense budget. And run to propose an amendment, before other countries have the same idea.
Gosh, how could this man Hoeg make up such an unsym/pathetic character? Smilla is ironic, violent, mistreats people who tell her mild jokes or even help her. She doesn't seem to want connections with anyone. Her affection to the murdered boy looks artificial. I found myself rooting for the supposedly bad guys almost from the beginning. Their evil was distant and abstract. Smilla's mistreatment of people is actual, real.
This flaws point to a broader picture. Women yesterday are independent, OK. Main female characters in novels must be too. All right. But how can one be independent and be sympathetic in one? It is obviously possible. But many writers fail to achieve it.
By the way, if this man Hoeg wants to put a detective series, I have an idea. Loyen, the brilliant scientist with an extensive record. Moritz, the charming elderly doctor. And some youngster to play the clown. A trio of good-humored detectives. And forget that Smilla, please.
Rated by buyers 
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I have just completed my fourth reading of this novel in two years. For anyone serious about his or her personal library this piece of literature is an essential. Much has to be credited to the quality of the translation as well as the intentions of the author. Yes, it's a thriller, a cultural and environmental examination, but just as importantly, an exposure of the motives of the human heart. Could there be any protagonist in literature as prickly as Smilla Jasperson? Rarely. Yet despite her self-imposed emotional isolation her heart is penetrated by a small boy, who edges into her life through a mutual cultural experience. When he dies under suspicious circumstances she becomes and unstoppable force in her search of a reckoning.
If you're looking for pure entertainment, pass on dear reader. If you are looking for an exemplary work of prose that pins your eyes to every sentence, gives you much to contemplate in terms of the human condition in the contemporary world, and haunts you until you want read it again, then dig in. But don't expect a tidy ending. If you learn nothing else from Smilla, you will learn that life just doesn't work out that way.
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The Eskimos have more than twenty different words for snow. Most of them will be found in this book. When a Greenlander boy falls to his death from a Copenhagen rooftop the police regard it as an accident. But Smilla Jaspersen, a half-Greenlander, is familiar with reading tracks in snow, and realises that her young friend has probably been murdered.
So begins this long novel. Not only a whodunnit, but a why-did-they-do-it and a what-exactly-did-they-do mystery. And a gripping thriller. The densely-hatched action commences in and around the Denmark capital, moves out to sea, and climaxes in Greenland. Those responsible for the boy's murder realise that Smilla is on to them, and are out to silence her at any cost, in case she should jeopardise their larger plans.
This is an unputdownable book, bristling with surprising twists and turns of plot. Hoeg is a talented writer, and his development of the characters, Smilla in particular, is masterful. She is portrayed as a sensitive, intelligent, and resourceful individual, proud of her Inuit roots and relentless in her pursuit of those responsible for the death of her friend and fellow-countryman.
Hoeg has researched well, and his descriptions of life and conditions in Greenland and of the local scenery are both beautifully depicted and completely believable. A totally absorbing reading experience.
Rated by buyers 
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On a cold December day in Copenhagen, a young boy named Isaiah falls to his death from the roof of the block of flats where he lives. The official police view is that he slipped and fell while playing on the roof. Smilla Jaspersen, a neighbour of Isaiah and his mother, does not accept that his death was an accident. Isaiah had a fear of heights, so was unlikely to have been playing on the roof; moreover, the footprints in the snow do not support the police version. Smilla therefore decides to start her own investigation to find out what really happened.
Isaiah and his mother belonged to Denmark's Greenlandic minority, and Smilla herself grew up in Greenland, the daughter of a Danish father and Greenlandic mother. She is in her late thirties, and works as a freelance mathematician and expert on the physics of ice and snow, although she has no formal academic qualifications, having left university without taking a degree. She is also known to the police as a former left-wing activist, which means that they do not welcome her intervention in the case. She discovers, however, that Isaiah's father was an employee of a Danish mining corporation and that he died in mysterious circumstances during an expedition to Greenland organised by this corporation. She begins to suspect that Isaiah's death was also in some way linked to the company, and learns that they are organising another voyage to Gela Alta, a small island off the coast of Greenland, although she does not know what the object of this voyage is. Nevertheless, she joins the crew of the ship as a stewardess, just ahead of the police who are trying to arrest her, believing that the key to the mystery lies on this remote island.
In many ways the plot of the novel reminded me of a film. (It was itself made into a very good film by Bille August).The very first part of the book, set in Copenhagen itself, was reminiscent of the films noirs of the forties and fifties. It could almost be the plot of a Humphrey Bogart film, if one can imagine a female, Danish Humphrey Bogart translated from Los Angeles to Copenhagen. A dogged, resourceful individual begins an investigation into a single event, and uncovers an increasingly complex web of corruption and wrongdoing. The second half of the book, set on the ship or on the island of Gela Alta, is more reminiscent of a standard thriller, with Smilla, in danger from ruthless villains and not knowing whom she can trust, desperately trying to unearth the secret at the heart of the mystery.
In some ways Smilla is a not very appealing heroine. She seems cold and unemotional and can be appallingly rude and sarcastic. On the other hand, she is courageous, determined and has a strong sense of justice- another similarity with the private eye heroes of film noir, who often hid a code of honour and a determination to see justice done beneath a surface veneer of world-weary cynicism. For all her surface coldness, Smilla seems to have an extraordinary ability to persuade people to help her in her task when they have no obligation to do so, and even when to do so would involve them in breaking the law. (At times this ability struck me as rather unrealistic- I kept waiting to see who would be the subsequent person to come forward and offer her their assistance).
The book has some interesting points to make about the native Inuit people of Greenland and the way in which their traditional way of life has been affected by Danish colonialism. The descriptions of wintery Copenhagen and of the Arctic snow and ice are very atmospheric. Despite this, however, I am rather surprised by the extravagant praise which the book has attracted, both on this site and from outside reviewers. The reviews quoted in the publicity material include comparisons with Melville and Conrad, which seemed to me to be exaggerated- a closer comparison might be a sort of Alistair MacLean for intellectuals. Although it follows the traditional MacLean-style thriller in structure, Hoeg's novel does not really succeed as such. The plot is excessively complex and the pace of the book is too slow moving, often slowed down by the weight of the author's intellectual interests. (Besides the physics of snow and ice, the Greenlandic language and parasitology play important roles). Like a number of others, I found the ending unconvincing, when Hoeg finally reveals the nature of the "McGuffin" for the sake of which the voyage to Greenland has been undertaken. I must say that I preferred August's film, which simplified the plot and had a more satisfactory pace.
Rated by buyers -
Smilla Jaspersen, a trained expert in everything pertaining to snow and ice, is shocked when the small son of her neighbour falls to his death from the roof of the apartment building. She knows that he is normally too frightened of heights to venture up so high so begins to look more deeply into the circumstamces of his death.
It's both a murder mystery and a thriller, set in Denmark and travelling to the Arctic Cap in Greenland, with its characters both theatrical and rather unreal.It's undoubtedly a beautifully written book but, as with all the Scandinavian writers that I've encountered, angst ridden and somehow depressing.
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