Though all the books on our list focused on icy cold, the winning book speaks about snow & ice in a way few other stories do.
But before we get to that, I thought we’d kick off our wintry reading with a poem. I usually don’t enjoy poetry which rhymes, but this bit of winter verse painted wonderful pictures in my mind. I hope it does the same for you.
“Winter’s Wrath
Winter’s sleep so close to death,
piercing with his arctic breath.
Brittle, naked limbs stretch high
in the icy pewter sky.
Bitter chill and stinging wind,
quiet earth grows gray and grim.
Polar pillows full of snow
hover over valleys low.
Veils of frozen crystal falls,
cascade over mountain walls.
Squalls and drifts of sparkling white,
glistening brilliance in the night.
Winter, with his wicked wrath,
leaves blinding beauty in his path!”
So what book are we reading?
Surprisingly, it’s a book from the only country on the list that we haven’t read yet—Denmark! Note: Depending upon your country, the book may appear with the name Smilla’s Sense of Snow or Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow. I know for sure that the former is the US title & the latter is the UK title.
“She thinks more highly of snow and ice than she does of love. She lives in a world of numbers, science and memories—a dark, exotic stranger in a strange land. And now Smilla Jaspersen is convinced she has uncovered a shattering crime...
It happened in the Copenhagen snow. A six-year-old boy, a Greenlander like Smilla, fell to his death from the top of his apartment building. While the boy's body is still warm, the police pronounce his death an accident. But Smilla knows her young neighbor didn't fall from the roof on his own.
Soon she is following a path of clues as clear to her as footsteps in the snow. For her dead neighbor, and for herself, she must embark on a harrowing journey of lies, revelation, and violence that will take her back to the world of ice and snow from which she comes, where an explosive secret waits beneath the ice.”
(Group read suggestion from Ivor Watkins, book club moderator.)
Happy reading!