The Washington Post’s Neely Tucker reminded us today that the beginning of the surge of hot properties from the cold lands of the Midnight Sun originated with Smilla’s Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg in 1992.
“The Danish author’s book featured “an attractive, antisocial woman from Greenland who had an obsession with snow and with the death of a child in her apartment building. It was a huge international hit, fueled by a riveting plot and by Smilla’s lyrical insights into the forbidding realm of ice…”
I remember Smilla well. I was fascinated by how different our views were of Copenhagen in the winter. I never saw snow stick to the ground longer than a few hours. Usually it would melt on impact or wash away in the endless rain. Perhaps snow lingers after the 23rd of January, when I flew home, in 1964, nearly 30 years before Hoeg published his book, and about 30 years before global warming entered our thoughts.
When I read the book, I wondered: Did Smilla really see snow like this? (WPost quote)
Now the ice will stay,” she thinks to herself at one point in early winter, “now the crystals have formed bridges and enclosed the salt water in pockets that have a structure like the veins of a tree through which the liquid slowly seeps; not many who look over toward Holmen think about this, but it’s one reason for believing that ice and life are related in many ways.”
Ice forming in the early winter? Google Maps shows no Holmen in Greenland, but several Holmens in Denmark. It was in Copenhagen that Smilla solved the murder, in fact discovered there was a murder, by studying the snow. I still wonder if February is early winter in Copenhagen.
That’s petty; I envy Hoeg’s writing.
Also, thanks to Tucker’s article, I now know that I am one of more than 500,000 U.S. people who have purchased The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest this month, but I may be the only one who hasn’t read it yet. I want to savor the book because I know there are no more Stieg Larssons. I never again will feel the magical surprises of reading his latest work for the first time.
Perhaps now that that door is about to close, the window will open on what the Post describes as the “insanely popular,” Stockholm crime writer Camilla Lackberg, whose first book in United States debuts this week. However…I will wait to read her. Again, I want to savor Larsson.
And, of course, there are the Larsson dragon-girl movies to come. Maia has already seen the three in BA, pirated. She praises them all.
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P.S. I just discovered that Smilla became a movie. Amazon offers it for sale; Netflix offers it for rental. It’s now on my list. I just wish it were available in the instant queue.