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929. Peter Hoeg - Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow

Tim O'Brien



Read this may years ago, when it first came out.

Overlong and should have been edited down, and the plot also over complicated. But nonetheless a big book, starts in Copenhagen with an apparent murder of a child, the second half is a voyage from Copenhagen to the west coast of Greenland in search of I am not sure that I fully understood what, with Smilla as a stowaway member of the kitchen staff.

She is an interesting character, a Greenlander, with a huge technical and intuitive interest in snow and the processes by which water solidifies.

A lot of interesting stuff about the cultural and social interaction between Denmark and Greenland- I had no idea that the latter was essentially colonised by the former. Elements of the voyage to Greenland reminded me of Moby Dick, which I have been vaguely thinking of re-reading.

So, more interesting than my original comments suggested – I just couldn’t fully follow the plot.


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