The book I would like to present is called “Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow” by Peter Hoeg. It was the intricate title that called my attention. I immediately thought about the Eskimos that have more than twenty different words for snow, but the question what exactly the book was going to be about still remained open. It was February, a fatiguing winter period and I was longing for someone with fresh approach to “icy” things that seemed totally unbearable by the end of the coldest season. I couldn’t but start the book that was like an enormous glacier, with arctic cold and frosty beauty coming from it. But let’s start from the beginning.
First of all I’d like to introduce the author Peter Hoeg, who was born in Copenhagen in 1957, and despite graduation with a MA in Literature in 1984 he tried a variety of professions before settling on writing. "Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow" is his second novel, and was first published in 1992. It went on to win the Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger Award and was shortlisted for an Edgar Award.
On the face of it the story seems to be a detective with queer decorations. But to analyze it I should inform you with the plot. On a cold December day in Copenhagen, a young boy named Isaiah falls from the snow-covered roof of their apartment block or, possibly, jumps trying to reach a neighbouring roof. The police, for obvious reasons, are inclined to write Isaiah's death off as an accident since his were the only footprints in the snow, it seems obvious that he was on the roof alone. Smilla Jaspersen, a neighbour of Isaiah and his mother, does not accept that his death was an accident. Her understanding of the tracks the child left on the snowy roof convinces her that this is untrue. Besides Isaiah has a fear of heights, so is unlikely to have been playing on the roof. Smilla therefore decides to start her own investigation to find out what really happened.
Smilla spent the early part of her life in Greenland although her father is a rich Danish doctor, her mother was Inuit hunter who wouldn't leave her homeland or abandon her way of life. During her Greenland childhood Smilla developed an almost intuitive understanding of all types of snow and their characteristics. It was only after her mother died that Smilla was brought to Denmark by her father though she spent many years running away, trying to return "home". She occasionally succeeded, but was always brought back. She's never really settled into Denmark, and still views herself as an outsider. Smilla lives in an apartment block called "the White Cells" close to the harbour - her neighbours are also Greenlanders, a community apart on the fringes of Danish society. She feels "the same way about solitude as some people feel about the blessing of the church". Still, she soon becomes close to Isaiah, the son of a neighbour. Isaiah's mother, Juliane, is an alcoholic and there are times when Smilla takes on Juliane's role - reading to, feeding even sometimes bathing Isaiah. The main heroine 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. Smilla does get lucky with her investigation and there are quite a few coincidences, but there's an awful lot more to the book than just the investigation.
Smilla herself is an interesting personality to discuss. In some ways she is a not very appealing heroine. She seems cold and unemotional and can be appallingly rude and sarcastic. On the other hand Smilla is one of the most solid characters I've ever encountered. Her personality crackles with intelligence, but also with self-knowledge, petulance, stubbornness, humanity, wit, and an inexorable strength second only to the glaciers. She narrates, describes, and enacts the action in present tense, which adds to the immediacy of her plans (and non-plans) and her unstoppable effects on the people around her - 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. Like all the best people, she is full of contrasts - probably the most complex is that between her powerfully rational 'masculine' intellect (the woman's idea of comfort reading is a nice thick Greek geometry textbook) and her genetically inherited sense that knowledge is the death of comprehension. I see her like a literal link between Greenland's still extant tribal peoples and the calculating, cultivated European modernity of Denmark.
To my mind it is deep cultural issues that are concerned in the novel, particularly Denmark's curious post-colonial history and also the nature of relationships that exist between individuals and the societies in which they are obliged to operate. There's a real sense of isolation and loneliness running through it, a real air of sadness. But Hoeg doesn’t depict is as a horror of life.
Frankly speaking, the language of the novel turned out to be rather challenging. It has got cold breath, happens to be insurmountable like snowy field, in which you fall into up to your knees, where every movement troubles you and puts you out of breath. And at the same time it is fine like frosty design on glass and what is left for us to do is to admire and take delight in its perfection.
This is a book that requires genuine commitment on the part of the reader. If you are looking for an exemplary work of prose that pins your eyes to every sentence, gives you much to observe in terms of the human condition in the contemporary world, and haunts you until you want read it again, then go ahead. I would recommend it for someone who is in search of breathtaking plot, atmospheric descriptions, food for thought and wants to understand what is snow for people who watch it during their entire life