Smilla's Sense of Snow

I found the plot complex and I missed some of the connections along the way but the overall story was so intriguing I didn't mind not being able to see the whole thing. I did have to read this 1 or 2 more times to absorb all the twists and turns.

My Denmark book around the world.

Probably closer to a 1.5, but I just can't. Full disclosure: I very much skimmed the last 20ish pages. The constant stuff about her being cold and that's supposed to make her deep and unique and the dialogue about her comparing some villain to a hallow teddy bear...I just can't. It was painful and this type of stuff was the focus of too much of this very long novel.

I liked the beginning, exploring her past, and her relationship with her father. I also liked learning about Denmark and Greenland and appreciate the insight into that but overall not the book for me.

I enjoyed this book not so much for its mystery/thriller aspect as for the main character, Smilla. Smilla is the daughter of a Danish father, a famed doctor, and a Greenlander mother, a hunter who disappeared at sea when Smilla was a child. She's now 37, lives in Denmark, has a strained relationship with her father, and is, in her own words “a bitter, old shrew.” She doesn't cultivate relationships with people, but to her surprise she makes a connection with a 6 year old boy from Greenland, Isaiah, who lives in her building with his alcoholic mother. When Isaiah dies by falling off the roof of their building, Smilla doesn't believe it's an accident. Smilla's Sense of Snow is the story of her doggedly pursuing the truth about what happened to him. Along the way, we get to know her backstory. She reads Euclid's Elements for enjoyment. She had a career as a scientist and a navigator. She ran away from her many boarding schools, and later never finished a degree at the graduate schools she attended. She puts people off with her focus on facts rather than emotions. She apparently has a “sense” for snow and ice, which is partly a lot of factual knowledge about snow and ice, but also is apparently a kind of intuition for its behavior. Smilla is a fascinating character, and I cheered her on throughout the novel.

I also enjoyed the portrayal of the colonial relationship between Denmark and Greenland, an integral part of the story, and something I didn't know about before.

The story as a thriller is convoluted and bound up in that colonial relationship. The number of details and the tenuous connections between them were a little hard to keep track of, but I was OK with all that until the end, when I was left disappointed and confused. I will be looking for someone to talk about the end with, hopefully to understand it better.

A great book that delivers from the first page to the last.

At first it feels a bit confusing, but with every other page it gets more fascinating. Not something you can put down easily.

A thriller that transcends the genre. Beautiful writing and a uniquely strong female lead. The original Lisbeth Salander.

“Smilla's Sense of Snow” is a little hard to get into. The first few chapters are seemingly disjointed, perhaps in an attempt to bring us into Smilla's way: to throw up walls with everyone she meets. But, we learn, there's a payoff to jumping the hurdles she and the book put up. Beyond are vivid memories of her strong mother; the brutality and beauty of life in Greenland; and what it is to be a forever immigrant, never quite at home and subject to the modern caste system in Denmark and associated colonial attitude to Greenland. Her relationship with a little boy that lives in her building; it is his death that ultimately pulls Smilla out of social hibernation.

At heart, Smilla is a hunter who changes her outward focus and inner thoughts to think like her target. She uses clothing as social armor and a mask for what she really thinks and feels. As the book goes on, we can see that Smilla could have learned more hunting skills from her Inuit mother (one memory recounts how Smilla's stomach turned doting a hunt as a child).

Some of the characters use a deep understanding of nature to arrive at a solution. Stella and her sense of snow and ice, which she accurately uses to understand what has happened and is happening. Benedicte Clahn and her knowledge of tide tables broke a post-World War II code. It is often the people who turn away from nature that fail in the book's world.

This is definitely the first book I've read that includes stories of Inuit life and how Danish colonialism has affected the Inuit people. Although the author doesn't have an Inuit background, my guess is that he knows or has talked to many of the Inuit people to develop parts of the story.

Until Smilla gets on the ship, the story is well-paced and surprises appear around each corner; sometimes Smilla's plan is a surprise and sometimes it's who she is chasing that startles the reader.

However, once on the ship, the story drags and is bogged down by literal snow and rather ridiculous sequences. The fact that the mechanic wasn't what he said is hardly a surprise given hints at a richer, well-travelled life in the first third of the book. But, his appearance on the ship as the important “fourth person” was silly, as was his intended purpose.

The ending of the book was rather unsatisfying and unbelievable, even for a thriller. So, despite an excellent first half with excellent characterization, the second half dragged the book down to 3.4 stars. It's still worth a read, despite its shortcomings.

I originally remember seeing this movie at the video store (yep, I'm that old) and never got around to seeing it despite liking the hugest bulked actors. Recently, Goodreads had a list of winter reads and I thought, why not? Anyway, it's time to get around to the movie!

I don't understand what all the fuss is about. I wonder if some of this book was lost in translation from Danish. There were a couple of points that I felt I was going to like this book, but then it would go off on a tangent about snow or simply stop with an uncompleted idea or thought. The ending was simply ridiculous.