Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg

Living in a tropical country, I never thought that snow could be so riveting. (Heck, living in a tropical country, I'm hardly riveted by the sun either. I do like the beaches, though. Anyway...)

Peter Hoeg's Smilla's Sense of Snow was in my To Be Read shelf for almost two years, and I am proud to say it has finally graduated to the Read-shelf. Yay! (cue graduation music). I started it several times and, more owing to my shortened attention span than the writing, have put it down in favor of the shiniest new bestseller

Lately, though, in the throes of Stieg Larsson withdrawal, I began looking for more mystery novels from authors of Scandinavian persuasion. And so I pick up this book once more. And finished it in my own sweet time. And find it slower than Larsson, but infinitely more intelligent.

Smilla Jaspersen, a Greenlander in Denmark, lives in a tenement for second-class citizens. She has no friends, except for a six-year-old boy, Isaiah, another Greenlander. But it is Isaiah's death that opens the book. And Smilla, possessing not just an affinity to the boy, but a curious affinity to snow, suspects more than just an accidental death. And so begins Smilla's search for the truth which brings her from the death of a young boy to a bigger industrial and scientific conspiracy. 

That's the mystery part, which is also riveting. But the intelligent part is how the book reveals the cultural issues besetting Greenlandic migrants to Denmark and the reflections on cultural alienation, human behavior, and math. Yes, math. 

Smilla may live in semi-poverty, but she's a highly accomplished scientist. Her sense of snow is near mystical, but her sense of measurement and geometry are equally impressive. And her reflections on all of these make for a very powerful commentary on life.

Yes, I like math and science, even if I can't understand the higher concepts. I stayed a few years in Electrical Engineering and took the full physics course, but barely remember anything of what I learned. Except absolute space, which eventually helped me understand the theory of relativity. (And when I think of the theory of relativity, I tend to relate it more to life than science.) Einstein's theory says everything is relative. It destroys Newton's theory of absolute space--that  there is an absolute space by which we can relate everything else. If this reminds you of the notion of absolute truth, you won't be too far away.

Anyway, Smilla believes in Absolute Space, because in the snow, in life, it is what gives her direction. So, initially, she does seem rigid. She's 37, alone, and homesick for a land and freedom that she lost as a child. She has grown old believing what she believes and to hell with people who think otherwise, including Einstein. She seems as cold as her expertise--snow. But in the course of the novel, you see her melt, never into mush, but into water, which, for all its fluidity, contains great force and can place great pressure.

Smilla is kick-ass, but not in a blazing-guns-whipping-katana kind of way. She just never gives up. This doesn't mean she's never afraid, though. Her kick-assness isn't of the extremely impulsive variety. Instead, she gets her persistence via much deliberation and conviction. Kind of like Hamlet. Except she's decisive. And takes action. And she's a girl. Ok, so maybe not that much like Hamlet. But she is highly conflicted and very philosophical. 

So, we have an intelligent and well-developed character, and, trust me, a good cast of supporting characters. But do we have an interesting novel? Personally, yeah, by simple virtue of me wanting to know why Isaiah died plus the things that I learned from reading this book. For instance, I never knew that Greenland was colonized by Denmark; I never knew that snow and ice had that many intricacies; I never knew that, when you fall into the water in Greenland, you never come up; and I never knew that, to Greenlanders, hell is the locked room, since they're used to wide open spaces. 

Smilla's Sense of Snow gave me a sense of snow and ice while I was reading it. The novel and the characters seemed cold, but everything fiery and passionate is there, just beneath the surface--Smilla's father's love for her dead mother; Smilla's determination to solve Isaiah's death; the intricacies behind the Danish shipping industry; the motivations behind the conspiracies. And Peter Hoeg structures his story like an iceberg:Isaiah's death is but the tip, the mystery story is but the tip. Underneath and hidden, is a much larger exposition on a world view and commentary on European culture and alienation which, frankly, was so much more interesting.