Book: Smilla's Sense of Snow

Author Peter Høeg was mentioned in some book I read recently—forget which—and "Smilla" is supposed to be his best work so I ordered a copy.  While I was waiting I noticed the movie version was on Netflix so I watched it. The story was intriguing, and the Copenhagen scenery was gorgeous. It's a mystery that slowly turns into a murder mystery that only very slowly reveals the depth of the plot.

So now the book is on my agenda.  As with most filmed book, the writing is much more poetic and engaging than the movie.  So far it's beautifully wrought. Real craftsmanship.

The writing is full of loops and patterns, variations on a theme, like music or a Hannah Gadsby special.  You didn't get that in the movie.

Really gorgeous writing.  An artist at work.

Peter Høeg wrote:

Ive acquired the basics of an education.  I've traveled. Occasionally I've felt I've done what I wanted. And yet some invisible hand has had me by the scruff of the neck, and every time I thought that now I was taking an important step up toward the light, it has pushed me farther into a network of sewer pipes running beneath a landscape I cannot see. As a rule I swim against the current. But on certain mornings, like today, I have enough surplus energy to surrender. I am strangely inexplicably happy.

I noticed the other day that this book was written in 1992.  It's thirty years old!

The book occasionally has oddly-phrased little tangents that come out of nowhere.

Peter Høeg wrote:

In our dawning, mutual intimacy, I induce him to open the little slit in the head of his penis so I can put my clitoris inside and fuck him.

Somewhere about halfway through the book the style subtly shifted. Now it's not so poetic anymore, it is more action-packed, and the action is surprisingly unrealistic. 

Smilla has superhuman strength, and superhuman resistance to cold, and superhuman ability to recover from injuries. She is able to hide in plain sight, and although ALL of the bad guys are looking for her she remains undetected.

It's turning into a Jack Reacher novel.

The ending is pretty unsatisfying. For the last sixty pages the author lost the thread, and riffed on a lot of nonsense. I remember the movie's ending seemed kind of tacked on too.

Wrote himself into a corner, he did.





Incidentally, since I mentioned Jack Reacher, I looked on PPV and there's a TV series on Amazon Prime (not the horribly miscast Reacher movie with Tom Cruise). The TV show at least has a Reacher that resembles the book.

But it's laughably bad homoerotic cartoonish stuff, with a hero who beats bad guys to a pulp with his fists while remaining immune to bullets and metal bars.  He's built like a Tom of Finland model, has no interest in girls, and spends a lot of time flexing in front of a mirror.  Spank fodder for gays.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.