Karen U. (editorgrrl) reviewed on 4/25/2005 + 255 more book reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The title of this quiet, absorbing suspense novel by a Danish author only suggests the intriguing story it tells. After young Isaiah Christiansen falls from a snow-covered roof in present-day Copenhagen, something about his lone rooftop tracksand the fact that the boy had a fear of heightsobsesses Smilla Qaavigaaq Jaspersen, a woman who had befriended him. Smilla is 37, unmarried, and, like Isaiah, part of Denmark's small Eskimo/Greenlander community. She is also a minor Danish authority on the properties and classification of ice. Her search for what had frightened the boy leads her to uncover information about his father's mysterious death on a secret expedition to Greenland, a mission funded by a powerful Danish corporation involved in a strange conspiracy stretching back to WW II. As related in Smilla's sober, no-nonsense narration, the plot acquires credibility even as its details become more bizarre. While the novel will probably be compared to Gorky Park, Hoeg has much more to offer, both in terms of his impeccable literary style and in the glimpses he provides of an utterly foreign culture. Its chief virtue, however, is the narrator: Smilla is never less than believable in her contradictionscaustic, caring, thoughtful, impulsive, determined and above all, rebellious. Smoothly translated by Nunnally, this is Hoeg's third novel, but the first to appear in English. A dark, taut, compelling story, it's a real find.

From School Library Journal
YA
A compelling and suspenseful adventure about a solitary 37-year-old Greenlander, an unemployed glaciologist who lives in Copenhagen. Smilla Jaspersen is caught between the pull of her Inuit roots and the restrictions and demands of the modern industrial world. The story begins when her six-year-old neighbor falls from a snow-covered roof, and it is declared an accidental death. She and the boy were close friends, and she was keenly aware of his abnormal fear of heights. This, together with her keen Inuit understanding of snow, causes her to doubt that it was an accident. When she questions the local authorities they are not interested, and she begins to make inquiries on her own. Her investigation takes her from shipyards, corporate headquarters, and the dark back streets of the Danish capital to a secretive voyage along the icy Greenland coast. Mysterious characters, violent encounters, and an intriguing puzzle propel the story along. The final scenes rapidly accelerate in action and suspense. It's a rare thriller that has such a strong, fascinating female protagonist, but this book also excels in story and characterization. It's a winner.

From Kirkus Reviews
Danish novelist Heg's first English-language publication is an attempt to freeze out Gorky Park by moving from an intimate mystery to an ever-widening circle of corruption and dangerand to even colder climes. Surly Inuit/Greenlander Smilla Jaspersen is a world-class expert on ice and snow who, since emigrating to Denmark, has gone on nine scientific expeditions to her homeland and published half a dozen highly regarded papers in scholarly journalsbut she still can't hold a steady job. When Isaiah Christensen, her six-year-old downstairs neighbor with a long-standing fear of heights, plunges from the roof of the White Palace, their apartment building, Smilla presses for a police inquiry; but instead of a homicide detective, the police send an investigator from the fraud division. Why? Also, why did somebody perform a muscle biopsy on Isaiah after he died? What was he doing on that roof in the first place? And what does his death have to do with his father's death on an expedition to Greenland two years beforea death that, Smilla learns from extravagantly pious accountant Elsa L?bing, was recompensed by a full, unearned pension by the Cryolite Corporation? With the help of another neighbor, dyslexic mechanic Peter Fjl, Smilla follows a trail from the White Palace through the Cryolite records of a fateful (and fatal) 1966 expedition, and ends up aboard the Kronos, a smuggling ship stuffed with drugs and desperate characters and bound for Greenland's Barren Glacier and a truly unimaginable cargo. Smilla, a wonderfully tough-talking amateur sleuth, gets out past her depth aboard the Kronos when her shipmates keep trying to toss her overboard. But her combination of brisk misanthropy and shrewd commentary on the colonial exploitation of Greenland--yes, this is a postcolonial novel about the Arctic--could score big.

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