Miss Smilla’s Feeling For Snow - Peter Hoeg
This curiously titled book, is an English version of the author’s original work in Danish. For those who revel in atmosphere, this book has tons of it. Beginning in a complex of high-rise flats in Denmark, the novel gradually progresses, traversing the cold of the Arctic Ocean and finally climaxes in the isolation of Greenland.
The story line of this novel is seemingly innocuous enough. A child - a neighbour and close friend of the heroine - dies falling of from the terrace of their apartment complex. It is concluded as an accident and would have probably remained but for the heroine Miss Smilla’s feeling for snow (hence the title!)This death leads the heroine to find the answer to certain questions that finally finds her up in a ship across to Greenland.
What is unique about this novel is probably the central character. Smilla Jasperson is miles different from the heroines one usually comes across in thrillers and Whodunits. She is in the wrong side of the thirties, single, unemployed, extremely lonely, yet at the same time, has a passion for Geometry and is one of the world’s leading experts on ice! Thus, we have a heroine who literally, as well as metaphorically, walks on thin ice on
the ocean in her quest for the truth.
The other important protagonist is "The Mechanic", who is another neighbour in the same complex of flats. He too plays an important part in Smilla’s journey.
This novel is as much about loneliness, geometry and ice as it is about the death of a small boy, the desolateness of the cold climes of Denmark and Greenland is vividly captured especially the depression associated with the state of being extremely lonely. To top it all, one actually ends up learning a little bit about advanced geometry and ice formation on oceans after reading this book, for whatever eventual use they might be of.
His other books are also equally different and unique in their own way. Will review them later