Well, I've finished my first piece of Danish literature not related to Hans Christian Andersen, namely Smilla's Sense of Snow. It's by author Peter Høeg, who unless you've read Smilla's Sense of Snow you've probably never heard of. I remember almost getting the book a couple of years ago when it was on the "staff favorites" section at Border's. It turns out that the guy who's favorite it was still worked there, and got really excited when he saw me buying the book (turns out he studied abroad in Denmark a while back). Anyway, about the book...The plot of the book is basically that of a murder mystery, although I would say the more interesting parts are about the narrator Smilla (who is half Danish, half Greenlander Inuit) trying to figure out her place in European Denmark. Please there is a lot of stuff about snow. The general plot is that her buddy, a six-year-old kid in her apartment building that she befriended, is found having fallen to his death off of the building. The police decide it was an accident but Smilla knows otherwise. She launches an investigation into things and discovers evidence of a larger plot, which ends up taking her around Copenhagen and then off to Greenland. Overall I thought it was pretty well written, although at one point Smilla gets hit with something about every other page until you're pretty much waiting for her to get run over by a Zamboni. Besides the murder plot, the book mainly focuses on how the Inuit are adjusting to life under Danish rule (spoiler: not very well), with some science thrown in for good measure. A lot about snow. And ice. I was a little disappointed it didn't have more about Denmark and Copenhagen, but that's not a knock on the book.
Pete's Rating: 3 out of 4 stars
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