I really enjoyed this book, but I am hard pressed to say why exactly. I think it must have been the strength of Smilla. She’s cold and there’s a vast distance to the narrative she tells. There is no one close in her life and it’s like she doesn’t want to let the reader in close either. At the same time, she’s determined, resourceful and above all just. I think that’s what might have been her redeeming feature.

The second half of the book is quite different to the first. The suspense kicks into higher gear and there’s more action. I enjoyed the contrast, though I didn’t find the slower pace of the first half at all difficult to take. The large tracts of information on seemingly irrelevant things were a bit harder to deal with in the beginning, but the further on you go the more you begin to see how things fit in. The jumping around of time also makes things difficult, but the further it goes the less it happens.

Smilla’s relationship with the ice was also particularly fascinating. Perhaps that’s because Australia is such a dry place that the way she relates to snow is such a novel and foreign thing.

It’s going to be a book I think about for a while to come.

Though basically a whodunit, it’s not a detective story, because the professional detectives show little interest. A small boy is killed falling off a roof, and a neighbour, the emponymous Miss Smilla, thinks it wasn’t an accident, because of the pattern of his footprints in the snow.

Though not a professional or even an amateur detective, she persists in digging up more information until some people are quite threatened by her activities.

I got bored part way through, put it aside and am not sure I’ll get round to finishing it.

Started this about 4 weeks ago and read 200 or so pages. Got sidetracked by other things – suppose the story just hasn’t gripped me. Will probably finish it sometime soon.