469 pages
English language
Published Aug. 8, 1993 by Delta Trade Paperbacks.
I found the setting to be interesting. Also, the story is intriguing throughout most of the book. However, the ending/conclusion was a let down and felt implausible. Also, the style of writing is rather special.
My excitement for this book only went downhill. I watched the movie a couple of times and really liked it. Smilla was such a fun character and the story was surprising. So after a couple of decades I finally decided to read the book. Smilla was still fun, the background about Greenland and her life there was interesting. But after a while the inconsistent pacing became rather annoying. So my rating went from 4 stars after the first chapter , down to three somewhere in the second half to two at the end. While all the background info certainly added to the book, the author didn't know when to stop. It was just too much filler and not enough meat. Sometimes less is more.
 I finally got around to reading a book that predated the recent Scandinavian crime fiction boom. A Greenlandic woman (child of a stormy relationship between an Inuit hunter and a Danish medical entrepreneur) lives a depressing life in a depressing council flat in Copenhagen, called out of her cultural and spiritual impasse by the death of a Greenlandic boy who the police say fell to his death from a roof while playing. Smilla reads something else in the child's footprints left in the snow. This takes her on a quest to find out what's really going on, leading into a mix of conspiracy thriller, medical thriller, and philosophical rumination. I enjoyed Smilla's prickly intelligence and the contrast of cultures; didn't much enjoy the way things got stranger and more grandiose as we ventured into the icy world where the perspective of the Other gets entangled with 20th century meaning-through-conspiracy-thinking. …
 I finally got around to reading a book that predated the recent Scandinavian crime fiction boom. A Greenlandic woman (child of a stormy relationship between an Inuit hunter and a Danish medical entrepreneur) lives a depressing life in a depressing council flat in Copenhagen, called out of her cultural and spiritual impasse by the death of a Greenlandic boy who the police say fell to his death from a roof while playing. Smilla reads something else in the child's footprints left in the snow. This takes her on a quest to find out what's really going on, leading into a mix of conspiracy thriller, medical thriller, and philosophical rumination. I enjoyed Smilla's prickly intelligence and the contrast of cultures; didn't much enjoy the way things got stranger and more grandiose as we ventured into the icy world where the perspective of the Other gets entangled with 20th century meaning-through-conspiracy-thinking. I wanted a more grounded Inuit take on that sense of snow. In many ways, it's brilliant, though.
