Monday 22 September 2008

The Quiet Girl by Peter Høeg


Vintage

KASPER Krone can hear aural auras, sensing the defining note of any person.
In the hands of Peter Høeg, whose Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, was a deeply loved cult hit in 1992, you can happily expect weirdness, depth of feeling and a blizzard of mad facts.
In his first book in 10 years, Høeg goes off on a solo flight.
Ex-clown Krone is pulled into a labyrinth surrounding the 'quiet girl' of the title - a child who reveals herself as having no 'tone'.
Krone's in trouble: a gambling habit has landed him with a huge tax debt and he's about to be deported and jailed.
Now he sets off to search for the toneless child, convinced that she's in the hands of kidnappers.
Krone is full of notions, the story full of whispery mysteries, devolving finally into fantasy about a race of magical children hidden from the world.
I loved Smilla, and found this disappointing. It's terribly complex, fine if it held great depths, but I couldn't see these depths - which is just as likely to be a lack in me as in the book.
If you love the circus, you'll love this, and if you love language, how could you fail to love a writer who talks of "heavy, fine rain that fell like a grey silk curtain".

2 comments:

Ranjit said...

Hi Lucille,

This is in response to your comment on my blog, where you had asked for ways to turn off the Google Autocomplete feature. (Turn off Google Suggest).

You need to type in that address in your address/location bar of the browser. (You can also bookmark/add it to favorites for later use.) That will set a value in your computer that tells Google you don't want the Autocomplete feature. Hope that helps. Leave me a comment if you still need help.

Cheers
Ranjit

Pageturners said...

Nope. Tried pasting it in, didn't work. Tried typing it in, didn't work. Tried restarting Firefox, didn't work.