Type of bind: Paperback
EAN num: 9780099526568
ISBN number: 0099526565
Label: Imprint unknown
Manufacturer: Imprint unknown
Page Count: 406
Publishing house: Imprint unknown
Studio: Imprint unknown
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A Chicago Tribune Favorite Book of 2007
The internationally acclaimed bestselling author of Smilla's Sense of Snow returns with this 'engrossing, beautifully written tale of suspense . . . captivating' (The Miami Herald).
Kaspar Krone is a world-renowned circus clown, and a man in some deep trouble. Drowning in gambling debt and wanted for tax evasion, Krone is drafted into the service of a mysterious order of nuns who promise him reprieve in return for his help safeguarding a group of children with mystical abilities--abilities that Krone also shares. When one of the children goes missing, Krone sets off to find the young girl and bring her back, making a shocking series of discoveries along the way. The Quiet Girl is an exuberant philosophical thriller that is 'every bit as adventuresome and ambitious as Smilla's Sense of Snow, even more so' (Cleveland Plain Dealer).
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Rated by buyers 
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How can a music-lover not be intrigued with a mystery novel whose opening page ends like this? "They reached the center of the courtyard, and Kasper got his very first sense of their musical key. It was D-minor, at its worst. As in Toccata and Fugue in D-Minor. Great fateful pillars of music. Then he recognized the little girl. At that precise moment the silence occurred." On the other hand, if this passage puts you off, be warned; it is typical of the whole.
I called this a mystery novel. Actually, there are at least four layers of mystery here. First, as with any whodunnit, those things that the police must find out: the authors of a crime -- in this case the kidnapping and murder of some small children. Second, those things that the reader must find out: the back-story of the principal character -- a renowned Danish circus clown named Kasper Krone. Kasper is brilliant, but has built up a load of trouble with unpaid gambling debts. He is also still searching for the great love of his life, a woman called Stina, who left him a decade ago after a three-month affair. For the very first half of the book at least, the reader spends more time piecing together Kasper's back-story than solving the crime, but it is all essential to Høeg's intricate narrative style.
The third layer of mystery is that of Kasper's genius itself. Judging from this and SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW, Høeg seems to like building a story around a character with unusual perceptions. In addition to Kasper's extraordinary ability to manipulate audiences as a performer, he is an accomplished violinist and is gifted with abnormal powers of hearing. These enable him, for instance, to place the source of a phone call from the faint sounds in the background. They also give him an uncanny intuition into what people are thinking and feeling by listening to their minds. Music has become his particular reference point and metaphor, especially the works of JS Bach; the musical writing in this book is pervasive and often exceptionally good.
A fourth layer is the mystery of what makes the missing children special. In addition to being unusually bright, they seem to have psychic abilities which verge on the occult. Also floating in the background, and somehow connected with the children, is an unusual group of nuns, an offshoot of the Eastern Orthodox church. The heady mixture that results -- science and religion, action adventure and near-fantasy -- puts me in mind of TROPIC OF NIGHT by Michael Gruber, another highly intelligent writer who is sometimes too complex for his own good. In Høeg's case, I went along gladly for the ride, but admit to getting a bit tired when the book seemed to be approaching an end for the third or fourth time, only to strike off in yet another direction.
But one thing that the children do have is the secret of silence. When I very first read the passage quoted above, I assumed that this silence was a negative quality, a disruption in the fabric. By the end of the book, I realized that it is what Kasper had been seeking all along, as a respite from the noisy adventures of his own life. As a metaphor for an almost religious vocation, it is not at all bad.
Rated by buyers 
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You have to work way too hard for this book to make sense, and it's not worth it. I really wanted to like the book, after enjoying Smilla so much. But I had to reread the very first 100 pages or so three times, with the attention to detail that is normally reserved for parsing arcane federal statutes and regulations for loopholes, in order for the narrative to even make a modicum of sense. Some books reward such effort; this one did not. By the end of the book, I just wanted to make it through so my hours invested in it wouldn't be in vain; I had long since stopped caring about any of the characters or enjoying the story (even though, as a general principle, I am perfectly OK with weirdness, paradigm shifts into sci-fi and fantasy, etc.). What starts as a charming and intriguing plot and cast of characters degenerates into a repetitious series of "Matrix"-like action scenes , while simultaneously (if improbably) getting too precious. The only thing that sustains interest is the book's "acoustic" motif. On the whole, a big disappointment.
Rated by buyers -
This book is a stinker. Page after page, who is this person, what are the rules, what is the game, for pity's sake? Polished steel, grey windows, gleaming dark wood, burnished stone- endless corridors, tunnels, secret back entrances. Good settings for this book is about the best I can say. Psycho-tech, a new genre? I didn't finish the book; I found I didn't care about the clown or the kids, or anything else about this book. A good music appreciation course would have been useful, at least- one can't hear it in this book. Not psychic enough, I guess...
Wallace Stegner, the great novelist, said an author does research and only uses about 20% of it, if he/she is good. This author and collaborator dumped it all in this book. Not good.
Rated by buyers 
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If you want a plot driven, tight taut, linear drama book to read on the plane, this is not for you
I love this book. I read it as slowly as possible to savour it. Then I read it again to try and unravel it further.
If you like Leonard Cohen songs even though they are incoherent and you can't tell what they mean just because of the beauty of the odd image they evoke?
If you possibly read and adored the complex almost poetry prose of Ann Michaels' Fugitive Pieces?
If you have ever been to and been smitten by Copenhagen?
If you find the Danes a conundrum?
If Bach makes you feel better?
This book is for you
Rated by buyers -
I ordered The Quiet Girl on CD, primarily because I thoroughly enjoyed Smilla's Sense of Snow. Either I have grown way too old since Smilla's Sense of Snow or something else has happened. I so did not enjoy this that I stopped listening to it after the second CD. Krone listens to people, that is correct, "listens" and usually hears Bach, but somettimes other composers, in a world that spins into the psychedelic. Definitely not for people like myself who would prefer the real world and don't believe in the world Krone inhabits.
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