Smilla's Sense of Snow

Synopsis
A young boy falls to his death and his neighbor Smilla sets out on a quest to prove he was murdered and find out why.

My take
This is not your typical whodunnit. It doesn't have a conventional ending or a conventional heroine. I liked that the ending didn't tie things up in a neat bow for me, but I'm still a little surprised I made it to the end at all. I just couldn't get into this book and I think most of the reason lies with Smilla. She's the star attraction of the book, and she's a polarizing figure you either love or hate. I didn't care for her. She possesses many traits I find admirable—self-sufficiency, inquisitiveness, pragmatism. But she was so aloof and robotic that it was hard to see her as fully human.

I also had a problem with the way the plot unfolded. I didn't follow the logic behind many of Smilla's decisions. Isaiah was afraid of heights, so it makes sense that Smilla would be suspicious about how he came to fall to his death from the top of the apartment building. But I never understood why she connected Isaiah's father's death with Isaiah's death. She turns out to be right and there wouldn't have been a story if she hadn't figured out the link between the two deaths, but the book is full of developments that I didn't quite follow.

This book did make me curious about the author, Peter Hoeg. He chose a female narrator and he also brings in elements you don't normally see in the mystery/thriller genre—for instance, the cultural clash between Denmark and Greenland and the use of math and science to solve the mystery.

Bottom line
If you can get past the flaws in characters and development, read this book on a swelteringly hot day or in front of a roaring fire because not only are the characters cold, but the locale is too—and it only gets worse the more the book goes on.

Fine print
Smilla's Sense of Snow, by Peter Hoeg 
Genre: Mystery
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from the library