Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow

I was so looking forward to reading Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow.  I’ve mentioned my love for a good crime novel before and I’m a big fan of the Nordic Noir that’s been all over the place in the last couple of years.  So, the amount I didn’t enjoy this book was a huge surprise and, more than that, a huge disappointment.  I can’t put my finger on exactly why I found it so difficult to engage with the book, but I have a few theories…

On the digital version I have of the 1,001 list the book’s called Smilla’s Sense of Snow.  This is a much better title; there’s alliteration, the fact that the “Miss” has been dropped brings it in line with Anglian names- in short, it’s a better (if less literal) translation.  It’s not something I’ve noticed, or really considered to any extent before, the only time I remember noticing it was in Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls which is an English book written as through it were translated literally from a Spanish text.  It may be because I know about the alternate titles I spent a lot of the book considering the role of the translator.  There are parts that are clunky in a way that is clearly down to the translation and I think that creates a barrier to enjoying the narrative.  There are two forms of the word “you” in Danish and choses to explain this explicitly at one point, even though there’s enough implication to explain the same.  It makes me wish “thou” was still in common use in English, just so we could avoid the confusion.

Another of my gripes was the constant reference to Smilla’s age.  She’s thirty-seven.  This is not old.  Someone really needs to tell Peter Høeg this.  I’m sure that what he’s going for is a criticism of Danish culture and its treatment of single women; he certainly doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to its racist attitude to Greenlanders, but he misses.  Throughout Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, she is so negative about her age and it doesn’t fit with the rest of the book.  Smilla gives not one shit about what she is supposed to do according to society, but takes incredible care to ensure that no-one sees her bald spot.  She uses the phrase, “at my age” or something similar more than my eighty-something year old grandmother and has exactly the same attitude of incapability towards some things.  If she were a man or even the maverick she professes to be, at thirty-seven she’d still consider herself in the prime of her life.

My third issue with the book was a petty and personal one.  The latter half of the book is taken over by massive ice-breaker ships and docks.  I cannot stand ships.  The idea of industrialised boats and their grime reminds me of the smell of my father’s car when I was a child.  He works with boats and would leave his equipment in his car almost permanently until the stench of the dirt had seeped into the seats.  It would always give me splitting headaches on long car journeys and Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow gave me the same kind of headaches. 

I feel a little cheated in all.  There are wonderfully cynical moments; any book that includes the phrase, “nothing corrupts like happiness,” should be a personal favourite instantly.  But these moments are too few and far between.  Smilla sees herself as a renegade, but she’s financially dependent upon her wealthy father still, through choice rather than necessity and, to honest- she’s just kind of a dick.

My next read is What Maisie Knew by Henry James. Considering my past experiences with James, I have a bad feeling about it.