| Title | : | The Quiet Girl |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0374263698 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780374263690 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 424 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2006 |
The Quiet Girl Reviews
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The Quiet Girl by Peter Høeg - one of the most peculiar novels any reader will encounter. Many reviewers dislike the story, the characters, the weirdness. Upon finishing the book's 400+ pages, some reviewers have even asked themselves: What the hell did I just read? Yet there's something about this inventive, uncanny literary work set in Denmark that resonates.
Why are readers frequently thrown off by this Danish novel? Answer: the Copenhagen of The Quiet Girl is as solid and as realistic as the London of David Copperfield or the Chicago of Sister Carrie or the New York of The Goldfinch, every bit as solid, realistic, and predictable - BUT (capitals for emphasis) Peter Høeg injects elements of the fantastic.
As by way of example, take the prime fantastical element: the tale's protagonist, forty-two-year-old world-renowned circus clown Kasper Krone possesses a miraculous ability to hear sounds and music. We're told each person is tuned to a musical key and Kasper can hear it. And the following is Kasper explaining to a friend that he waited until sunset to make a telephone call so he could use the background sounds on the other end of the line to pinpoint the location of the person answering the phone:
"The city is a sound map. Grundvig Church. Tuned in D. And above that, the F-sharp is heard just as strongly. The church has only the one huge bell. Its chimes could never be confused with those of the Church of Our Savior. Each is unique in its own way. So if you talk on the phone at sunset, and listen beyond the voice and compensate for the flat sound picture, you get an impression of where the person at the other end is located on the sound map."
Extraordinary acrobatics are also part of Kasper's repertoire. At one point during his interrogation by members of the Ministry of Justice for tax evasion, Kasper launches himself into a series of movements bringing to mind Houdini. I suspect those Danish officials never witnessed such a breathtaking display of somersaults and circus skills by anybody attempting to exempt themselves from paying taxes.
Deep into the story, police do their best to catch Kasper during a car chase. Kasper looks out the window and sees there are motorcycle police on every corner and enough armored cars to drive straight into a war zone. What in the world is going on here? Answers are provided to Kasper (and readers) but not until the final chapters. There's ample reasons why the publisher's dust jacket blurb characterizes The Quiet Girl as a fast-paced philosophical thriller.
One thing that makes this novel a page-turner: right at the outset Kasper learns a girl by the name of KlaraMaria has been kidnapped, a nine-year-old possessing special gifts of sound and silence. Kasper sets out to find out why and by whom - and rescue KlaraMaria.
Such a remarkable novel. Questions to keep in mind while reading: What does Kasper's perceptions and ability say about our common human experience? What would be the consequences if a sizable portion of humans were capable of hearing like Kasper? To share a more complete rasa of what a reader can look forward to with The Quiet Girl, here are a trio of direct quotes:
"He felt with his hearing. Behind him were rows of small houses leading toward Bagsvaerd, behind them the night traffic on the main highways. To his right, the wind in Lyngby Radio's installations. From the lake, the sound of the last ice that had broken up and was tinkling at the shore, like ice cubes in a glass. Ahead of him, dogs had awakened one another somewhere around the regatta pavilion. He heard the rushes rustling. The night creatures. The wind in the trees in Slotspark. in just one place, a voice in a garden. An otter fishing near the canal connecting to Lyngby Lake."
"Some children weren't children; they were very old. Kasper had begun to hear this twenty years ago. Some children were ancient souls with a thin infantile veneer. The boy was at least twelve hundred years old; his sound rang like one of Bach's great pieces."
"A feeling of no escape is in D-minor. It was Mozart who discovered that. And developed it. In Don Giovanni. Around the statue. Before Mozart, there had always been a way out. One could always pray to God for help. Doubt about the Divine begins with Mozart."
Danish author Peter Høeg, born 1957 -
I checked this book out because I wanted to read something different and I succeeded beyond what I had expected.
Besides a passing familiarity with Hans Christian Anderson, I had never read a Danish author to my knowledge, and I knew only that Copenhagen was a city in Northern Europe, so this fit the description of something different.
But what exactly this book is still eludes me.
I read some reviews and I was somewhat relieved to see that I am not the only reader trying to figure out what we had just read. Some critics even blamed the translator. I could say postmodern, avant grade, I could even say magical realism and then only because the back cover told me that.
This is sort of a mystery, thriller, detective case with spiritual, philosophic, theological, mystical, fantastic elements weaved in. The protagonist is a circus clown/pyschic healer/gambler/conman/criminal who has the unique, almost psychic, ability to "hear" a different reality, bordering on clairvoyance.
So, two thumbs way up for originality and a quizzical shrug for whatever the story was about. Strange thing was, I liked it.
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I loved Smilla's Sense of Snow and expected good things from this. And really was intrigued by the main character: his ability to hear emotions and feelings others don't, in tones, musical references, and across distances, and very usefully, what's going on behind someone's voice during a phone call. A good quality for a man trying to hunt down some child snatchers. And his profession - a clown who is wanted across Europe for tax evasion - was inventive and surprisingly useful when inserted into the plot at key times. Kasper Krone alone makes this book worth picking up. But I got lost about 100 pages in by the jumbled plot, had no idea who all the characters were or the time sequence, and plundered forward expecting at least a nice, satisfying wrap up at the end. No dice. Just a little more confusion and then a dead thud. Did the kids have the ability to predict earthquakes or not? Will the main bad guy make millions from buying up flooded downtown Copenhagen real estate and then selling it? I'll never know. And these seemed like some key plot points to me! Oh well. I will remember Kasper for a while, I'm sure.
-
I am a huge fan of Peter Hoeg. He manages to create a strange blend of brittle intellectualism and dreamy philosophy that I find fascinating. The Quiet Girl, like Smilla's Sense of Snow and Borderliners, is a kind of mystery novel with an almost translucent layer of the occult. And as in those books, the supernatural is revealed and translated through thinking; it has to do with people's minds, and understanding of the world, and attempts to establish and clarify their attachments to other human beings.
What's the plot? Whatever, read the synopsis from the publisher. Kaspar Krone is a famous international clown and he is searching for a kidnapped little girl with weeeeirrrd powers. The first couple of hundred pages take the story back and forth through time, and it's somewhat confusing, but Hoeg seems to like to keep the suspense as high as possible; it reminded me a bit of that Murakami novel, where you don't even learn the narrator's name until about a third of the way in, I think Wind-Up Bird Chronicles. Like Murakami, Hoeg plays a multilayered shell game while building up the stakes on the characters as you get to know them. And there's no telling where it could be headed; I guarantee the ending of Quiet Girl will be a punch in the gut, whether you are pleasantly flabbergasted or furious.
I also loved all the discussion of sound and classical music. Maybe because I don't know much about those things? And there is a heavy emphasis on the Divine, which Kaspar Krone refers to as "SheAlmighty," ha! Hoeg's writing is both precise and emotional, and occasionally brutally explicit. Really, he's unbelievable, I highly recommend any of his books.
Anyway here are some quotes from The Quiet Girl:
"'When you really listen, all sounds begin to organize themselves into themes. They aren't haphazard. We don't live in chaos. Someone is trying to play something. Trying to create a piece of music. '"
"He neared the end of the first section, the number of simulated voices at a maximum; he had never fully understood how Bach did it--sometimes he thought perhaps there was not just one "Chaconne" perhaps there was a flowing tonal virtuality that kept multiplying and would never end. Perhaps people are like that--perhaps each of us is not just one person but an endless series of unique constellations in the present, or maybe that gets too complicated? That's the question the great improvisers ask: Can we find our way back to the theme and the keynote?"
And here's one of my favorites, this is just so Peter Hoeg:
"'My problem,' said Kaspar, 'is that even if she had killed and devoured a whole family, I'd still love her.'"
-
Ahhh... So after 4 days of semi-forcing myself to finish this book, I'm finally done. There are nice quotes throughout the book, but aside from that, I didn't really get anything from the story aside from a splitting headache and disappointment. Though I got this secondhand, I wish I hadn't bought it at all. It's that bad (for me, at least).
CONFUSING. If I had to use just one word to describe how I feel about The Quiet Girl, that would definitely be it. Looking at my notes, that's the most used word. It's an understatement, still.
A few things:
- Time, sequencing: too confusing. I felt like I'm being propelled back and forth through time too often than necessary.
- Too many characters. Too much stuff going on. Too many complications. Too many pages. Too many information sometimes. I had to go back a few pages (and sometimes, chapters) just to remember who the hell these people are and what the hell's happening. More often than not, I still didn't get it. I don't think I understood anything at all.
- I find it extremely boring. I fought the urge to quit reading it too many a time. But I finished it, still; I desperately wanted to find something that would make me like this book, because I genuinely felt there was something to like. Well, 408 pages later, I found nothing. Aside from Maximillian, which was the only character I truly liked, loved even. I'm torn between liking Kasper and dismissing him as just "okay."
- When I was reading the book, I decided that this would fall to the okay-i-have-to-read-this-again-some-time-maybe-i'll-appreciate-it-by-then pile but that changed even before I was done. I never wanted to discard a book even if I didn't like it much but this one, I don't know. I just feel extremely dumb because of it, feel like it ruined my life. HAHAHAHA. Kidding aside, there's a part of me that seriously wants to get rid of the book.
I rarely do this because I'm not good at making reviews, I just felt like I had to let this out somehow, somewhere. Haha. Forgive me for rambling. -
Well that was complicated! Some lovely writing. I didn't always know where I was but I was along for the ride. I enjoyed listening to James Gale's voice as he narrated the story.
Favorite quotes:
"A middle-aged woman was selling maps behind a counter. If she had been a dog there would have been a sign saying 'proceed at your own risk.'"
"In a little while," said Casper, "You and I will complete the course of our lives. Perhaps in the same psychiatric nursing home sitting in a couple of chairs like these. There we will meet all the flowers we have trampled."
"Is it shameful to miss your mother when you're forty-two and walking a tightrope stretched across a nervous breakdown?"
"He had sand in his joints. His body had used coffee, had used Armagnac, had used a little organic chemistry to stay awake. He had none of these things now. A prayer began instead. Prayer is a paper ship of wakefulness on the stream of worldly weariness." -
Smila's Sense of Snow, Hoeg's first novel, was unforgettable but in The Quiet Girl, he has surpassed even that. Once again there is a special child, once again there is a strong, intelligent, capable heroine, there are dastardly villains and the sense of a thriller but there is also so much more. I suppose some critic could complain that there is a bit too much more but I like a story that works on various levels.
Kaspar Krone is a world famous clown, a professional violinist and a free spirit who spends the whole story in a world (literally) of trouble. He has a gift: an ability to hear beyond what most mortals can. He can discern what musical key any giving person is in; he can locate a phone caller's location by the sounds he hears through the phone. Every aspect of life has a sound that relays to Kaspar most of what is going on. Reading about this amazing world of sound made me realize how little I listen to life around me.
Kaspar has a personal deity he calls SheAlmighty. He is partial to nuns and loves women in general. KlaraMaria is a gifted child for whom Kaspar feels unaccountably responsible. She and several other children like her are being used by unsavory persons for financial gain. Then there is Stina, the great unrequited love of Kaspar's life.
Despite his religious proclivities and his many talents, Kaspar is pretty much a self-centered asshole. His personality defects make the characters around him seem almost holy, though none of them are without flaws and the reader is never really sure which are villains and which are trustworthy. Woven into this breakneck thriller are layers of philosophy and contemporary issues, orchestrated by all manner of music both popular and classical.
Will KlaraMaria be saved? Will Kaspar and Stina ever get back together? Who exactly is behind the terror of troubles in the characters' lives? Hoeg answers all questions, wraps up all loose ends, most everyone is allowed either redemption or justice.
I was entertained, intrigued and kept thinking of new ideas the whole way through this magical mosaic of a tale which touched on all five senses and every emotional level from despair to absurdity. -
Not sure why I picked this one up at the library. I did not appreciate Smilla's Sense of Snow a few years back. But I'm muddling along here in Denmark with an outlaw famed clown who has the ability to know all things through absolute hearing. He's searching for a missing child or two and trying to avoid extradition and various court cases and legal issues. Way beyond weird. I can't tell when I'm in the present or if we're visiting the recent past. Not sure if it's the writing, the translation or a brain fart on my part.
Gave up on it. Too many books, not enough time. -
I wanted so much to like this one, to read something similar to my old favorite (Smilla and her snow sense) . Many times I felt the story of Kasper - the supernatural clown with perfect hearing - was flirting with greatness, and then something happened and I put the book down in order to pick something else. That's how it took me three weeks to read a book I should have finished in 2 or 3 sittings.
The Quiet Girl uses a similar frame to Smilla : an investigation into the murder / disparition of a child. For a thriller this new book has a very difficult pacing - always taking one step forward advancing the actual plot and two steps back in random flashbacks fleshing out the back story of Kasper in little bits at a time. It feels muddled and hard to follow with the introduction of supernatural elements and with a main action character prone to navel gazing instead of investigating the actual mystery of the missing quiet girl.
The book functions much better as a philosophical essay, with its numerous references to classical music, circus life, Copenhagen street life, the wisdom of the church elders, modern philosophers and pop culture trivia. Maybe one reason I failed to connect with the story 100 % is the constant reference to music. The sound detection abilities of Kasper are so perfect they became hard to digest by my skeptical mind and my engineering training. I love the classical composers, and I have listened extensively to most of the compositions mentioned here, but I'm tone deaf and I couldn't tell a C minor from an A flat if you were to torture me, so most of the explanations of why Johann Sebastian Bach is a perfect composer were lost on me.
The human interest story of Kasper and his search for redemption after losing his mother to a circus accident and his lover to his own inflated ego, is slow to develop, but the patient reader will probably find satisfaction in the final reveals. -
Ne ar vienu Pētera Hēga grāmatu nebija gājis tik grūti. Pat ar Smillu ne, kas man laikam gan patikusi vismazāk no visām pārējām. Tāda cīkstēšanās gandrīz visu lasīšanas laiku, grūti iebraukt, grūti saprast, grūti uztvert. Likās, Hēgs iesmej par mums, tādiem kā es, kuri netiek līdzi viņa intelekta lidojumam, aprautajām, pustoņos pateiktajām frāzēm, kuras pašam jāizloba un pašam par visu jātiek skaidrībā. Lasīju, ka Dānijā šī grāmata uzņemta gandrīz vienbalsīgi iznīcinoši - pārāk sarežģīta, nesaprotama un pārāk gara. Kaut kur piekrītu, bet Hēgs vienalga mani valdzina.
Apbrīnoju viņa prātu, loģiku, milzīgās, daudzpusīgās zināšanas. Bahs, Bēthovens, Brāms, Vāgners, Rihters, Mocarts, Lists - komponisti un viņu vājības, mažori un minori, toņkārtas, skaņdarbu sarakstīšanas vēstures peripetijas tiek bārstītas biezā pūdercukura kārtā - liekas, ka visa grāmata skan kā milzu orķestris. Es daudz klausos klasisko mūziku, bet šīs nianses man bija svešas. Jungs un Freids gan tiek pieminēts samērā bieži. Un atkal liktenīgais tēvs - stiprais, varošais, bagātais, augstos amatos esošs - šis tēva tēls ir vairākās Hēga grāmatās.
Man ļoti patika Hēga pārfrāzētā lūgšana - Mūsu TēvsMāmiņa....
''Bērni pamodās pulksten pusseptiņos pa taisno ceturtajā ātrumā. Pēc četrpadsmit stundām viņi ar divsimt kilometriem stundā pa taisno iegāzās miegā, ātrumu nenomezdami. Ja būtu iespējams pievienot elektrodus un iegūt enerģiju no bērniem, varētu nopelnīt lielu naudu.'' (58)
''Jungs kaut kur rakstīja, ka visātrākais ceļš uz psihozi iet caur televīziju.'' (128)
''Izcilie komponisti ir svētie, kuri ļāvušies piedzimt starp mums. Lai palīdzētu mums visiem.'' (368) -
You know how confusing it is to listen to someone else's dream? "So there was this clown, but he wasn't funny exactly, more like he could do sleight of hand and stuff, and it was in Denmark and there were earthquakes and they were worried about flooding, and he was trying to rescue these kids that had some kind of supernatural powers I think? Oh, and the clown could hear everything, like people's heartbeats and personalities and what time of day it was, so he was trying to use his powers to find the kids but there were also these nuns, but one of them was married I think, I can't exactly remember but she was an athlete, and there was an underground slide and a helicopter and the clown kept getting beat up and shot but still living somehow? And I forgot about his dad, his dad was a clown too but retired, and he was sick and dying and kept showing up in the story to give advice and stuff. Also the clown was CRAZY sexist and had major issues with women. It was like a really weird action movie but kind of mystical? I can't explain it, sorry, I should probably just eat breakfast and I'll feel better."
That is pretty much how The Quiet Girl went. I feel like Peter Høeg wanted to write something deep and philosophical and haunting, but he also wanted to write an action thriller with visually exciting scenes that would make it into the movie with absolutely no changes whatsoever. He tried to do both at once. The effect was like a tapestry done in subtle shades of blue and grey with a few skeins of sparkly neon rainbow and glow-in-the-dark green to liven things up. The only reason I gave it two stars is that there is a distinct possibility that the translator made it worse, and maybe it made more sense in the original language. -
The kind of book I loathe: one that sets out to assert the intellectual superiority of the author and make the reader feel stupid. I only finished it out of the sheer dogged determination that's part of my character and honed by three years as an English undergraduate.
The novel is about a clown, Kaspar, who is able to hear people and objects as music and is able to reach sounds that other people can't, and is in trouble for debt and tax evasion. There is a young girl who, along with a number of other children, appears to be in danger. There are some strange nuns who help Kaspar out in return for him helping them safeguard the children. And there are earthquakes in and around Copenhagen - or maybe not.
The novel keeps jumping around in time, and joys in its detailed and obscure references to pieces by Bach and to the geography of Denmark. If you really have nothing better to do, and you are of a particularly masochistic temperament, wrap a wet towel round your head, stock up on ibuprofen and a few bottles of your favourite tipple, and read it.
If not, there's always the grout to whiten or the kettle to descale. -
I would not recommend this book to anyone, period. I guess I finished it because I was trying to understand what was happening all the while. And also because there is a certain calming quality to Hoeg’s prose in general (hence two stars instead of one). But this is. Just. Bad.
-
Thoroughly dashing with many moments of sublimity.
The Quiet Girl is a quirky book and is not going to be everyone's cup of tea. It's not a crowd pleaser, like The Time Traveler's WIfe. But when a book calls itself a philosophical thriller what do you expect?
What Peter Hoeg gives you is a deliciously unique read that contains reflections on sound, classical music, spirituality, mysticism, psychology, and love. A fantastic combination. You have fast pacing, and you have moments of reflection. This isn't a beach novel, this is a novel that is athletic, relentless, driven, intelligent, risky, spiritual, and human.
Some of the prose is exquisite: "Some children weren't children; they were very old. Kasper had begun to hear this twenty years ago. Some children were ancient souls with a thin infantile veneer. This boy was at least twelve hundred years old; his sound rang like one of Bach's great pieces."
The book is not perfect. Some of the prose is choppy. Whether this is the translation, the nature of Danish, or the nature of thrillers is hard to say--I don't usually read thrillers. Some of the prose seems a bit flat, especially Stina's factual exposition. On the other hand, perhaps that's the idea as she is guarding herself. There are moments when the plot itself feels choppy, with its frequent cuts and location changes, not to mention flashbacks. But these are the very thing that create much of the pacing and suspense.
The end was a slight let down for me with a lukewarm romantic note. Not entirely out of keeping with the novel but I suppose I was expecting something grander. Overall a throughly enjoyable read. -
I know someone who loves this book and has bought several copies to give away to his friends (I'm one of them). He would give it six stars if he could. I give it three out of respect for the author who clearly has an impressive talent but the simple fact is this book is not for me. I don't enjoy being thrown around and confused, no matter how expertly, and I felt frustrated for most of the time.
If you enjoy being led down an evocative, obscur path and prefer the journey to the destination, you will most likely thoroughly enjoy The Quiet Girl. If you prefer to have a clear grasp of what you've just read after you've forced your way through a jumble of misdirection and hard-to-suspend-disbelief moments, then you'll feel cheated. -
DNF 67 pages
I should have known because I though Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow was massively overrated but this was something else. I guess some people will be falling over themselves at it's magical weirdness but for me it's a no. Hate myself for not fishing but I just can't.
Q ; How many shrooms would you need to ingest for this to make sense.
Utterly utterly bizarre. -
I really enjoyed reading this, but it's a somewhat overwhelming experience. It's structurally a detective story, but there's a lot more going on. Technically, you could call it a supernatural investigation—our protagonist has unnaturally acute hearing and the plot centers on a group of children with supernatural abilities—but whatever you're thinking, it's not that. There are conventions around that kind of story, and this doesn't fit. It's weirder.
The story jumps around a lot, chronologically: flashbacks inside flashbacks. There are a lot of characters, and they tend to show up unexpectedly in different contexts. Initially, it's not at all clear what's really going on, who is involved, and what the motivations and alliances are. I enjoy that, but be ready for it. It's one of those stories you kinda need to read twice (which I haven't yet): first to get an overall sense of what is happening, and then to go through and take notes on who knows what when.
It would also be helpful to have an understanding of music theory and a familiarity with classical music (neither of which I have) because that's how Kasper, our protagonist, perceives the world, in a literal way. -
The Quiet Girl is, in many ways, an amazing novel. The depth of research alone is astounding: the life and work of Bach; the interactions of various Danish governmental, financial and judicial organisations; the history of the circus; seismology; the actual, physical underbelly of Copenhagen.
Hoeg has a fascination with people who possess extraordinary mental or psychological powers – Smilla’s ‘sense of snow’, the children in Borderliners – and this book is no exception. Kasper Krone’s hearing is a kind of super-sense. He can not only hear the minutiae in every soundscape ‘fast lifts, muffled ventilation systems, the cosmic whisper of a thousand tons of IT’; he can also ‘hear’ people, the musical key to which they are tuned, whether they are telling the truth, whether they feel anxious.
This ‘gift’, a strange side-effect of a devastating childhood accident, is both a blessing and a curse, and Kasper forms a special connection with a mysterious child who allows him to access silence. When he finds out the child has been kidnapped, Kasper risks everything to find her.
Kasper is a striking and memorable protagonist. He is audacious and unscrupulous, quick-witted and charismatic. He lies and cheats and deceives; he uses his music, his circus tricks, violence, bribery – anything it takes to get what he wants or needs. If he wasn’t doing all these things for a higher cause, he might be detestable. But everything he does is to save ‘the quiet girl.’
The novel deals with love, both familial and romantic, with passion – for music, for science, with faith and prayer. It is, in some ways, a kind of ‘bildungsroman’, in which Kasper is forced to confront his own nature, all his demons, his past, everything that has made him who he is.
What lets this book down is the plot, which is insanely complicated. I got to page 75, and had to start again because I had already lost track of the key characters and what Kasper was pursuing. After that I took notes as I read and even then, from scene to scene, I often had no real idea of Kasper’s motives. When I reached the end I still hadn’t really understood why the girl had been kidnapped, or even who the goodies and baddies really were. I felt like I was playing chess with a person who was at least six moves ahead of me. And it was tiring. And tiresome.
Peter Hoeg is without doubt an extraordinarily clever writer. Perhaps a little too clever for me. -
A lot of people seem to have really enjoyed this book, but I just didn't get it. Being a musician I appreciated all the musical references and glad I had an understanding of what he was talking about in that respect or the book would have had no meaning for me. Simply put I just didn't get the point of the book. There were a few lines or quotes that I thought were interesting on true to life but the overall story was just odd to me. The characters didn't feel like real people, or seem to do the things I would expect real people to do. I understand that there was a science fiction/fantasy element to Kasper, KlaraMaria and some of the other characters and what they were able to do or feel and I was able to suspend my disbelief for that part of the story, but it was the human emotions, choices, etc. that didn't feel genuine to me. It's a book that maybe one day down the road I will pick up and try to read again to see if I have a different or better understanding. At first I couldn't follow the action, but decided that was because I was reading the book in short snatches and not giving it my full attention once I sat down and gave it attention I easily followed the story and I wanted to enjoy it and get into it, but I just couldn't. This is not the type of book I typically read but wanted to try something new so take my review with a grain of salt.
-
I'm listening to this, and really, truly, I have very little idea what is going on. I"m on CD two. There are clowns and a man who feels music in people. Two or one quiet girls. I intend to keep going, but I feel as though I'm in one of those bad dreams from which awakening is prohibited. Sort of interesting, but very disconcerting.
Okay, folks, I finished this wild, bizarre, strange story, that ended up making sense out of non-sense. Really intriguing, very funny, smart, ironic, spiritual, artistic and worth the hard slog through intense confusion. -
Littered with brilliant scenes, this novel simply does not hang together. A pity, but the author deliberately crafted it like this, so cannot be to surprised at the reaction. With a slightly different approach by the author, this book could have been outstanding.
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Rašytojas blaškosi tarp nemalonaus snobizmo ir perdėto rašymo italiku, kai citatos ir REIKŠMINGI PAVADINIMAI, apsupasusupasuvysto tekstą ir jo reikšmė gręsia pasimesti visame šitame žodžių vomitizme. Ir tarp dieviškos (ir kaip nekeista krikščioniškos) egzaltacijos, kada jo paties tikėjimas pradeda užkrėstiapimti ir mane ir čia aš jau kvėpuoju kartu su autoriumi ir jo frykiš personažais, nusileidusiais tiesiai iš... komiksų. Tačiau yra dar trečia sudedamoji. Ir aš nepatingėjau ir sukūriau jums spotify playlist, kur savo neišmanančiu skoniu surinkau jums muziką, kuri aprašytalydi visą autoriaus knygos timeline. Gal jus nuves kur nors visai į kitą šoną, tačiau aš kartu su muzika gavau pastiprinimą antrai Symplegades uolų pusei ir pasirenku šią knygą, kaip naujovišką religinę literatūrą, kuri man #Recom. #LEBooks #PeterHoeg #TheQuietGirl #DenStillePige
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0J4... -
This book had a nice idea but I was never able to become invested in it. There was nothing wrong with the plot but I never found myself really caring what happened next. Maybe the biggest reason for this was that it felt like the story was waffling between being a mystery, suspense, etc. and could never figure out what exactly it wanted to be.
-
About ten years ago, I had a friend who recommended the works of this author, told me
Smilla's Sense of Snow was one of his favorite books. So I started reading it, but at fourteen/fifteen, I just didn’t have the patience with the postmodern fragmentary construction of the text. I ended up just skimming through it, and later watched the film in order to put all of the pieces together. But the one aspect of the book that’s stayed with me after all those years was Høeg’s poetic style. Imbedded in the text are certain observations that are cool and intriguing in the way they’re crafted. So when I came across The Quiet Girl, remembering that particular aspect of Høeg’s writing, I decided to try again.
Now that I’m older, I’m better able to grasp what Høeg’s doing with his storytelling. He’s writing a mystery, and rather than giving the reader all of the information as it happens, he’s giving you pieces—each page is a new piece to the puzzle. He’s forcing the reader to become part of the story and be the detective—to arrange all of the puzzle pieces together into a cohesive whole. Considering it in this light, I can sort of respect what he’s doing, but it still takes just over 100 pages to really understand what’s going on. The basic story skeleton follows Kaspar Krone, a famous circus clown, and his attempts to locate and uncover the conspiracy surrounding the disappearance of KlaraMaria, a girl he’s met a few times at the circus. From the moment he first meets KlaraMaria, he immediately senses something special about her—the calm, soothing silence that radiates from her being—something he’s always secretly desired for himself. Day and night Kaspar’s constantly bombarded with sound and music. An accident has left him with the ability to sense and gauge people’s auras and thoughts with music; slight shifts in thought or feeling can change the tone/song that radiates from a person’s soul. When he’s with KlaraMaria, her silence cancels out his own abilities, and eventually grows to love her like a daughter. When he discovers that she’s been kidnapped, he’s afraid of how her abilities may be manipulated, and begins a quest to find her.
I thought this idea interesting. Høeg’s other novels also include stories about children with special abilities. However, I’m not that sold on the ending. Personally, I feel it would have been better for the novel to end on a personal level rather than the grand philosophical questions on which the book ends. I’m still trying to figure out if in the end, the table’s turned… that Kaspar’s actually the one in danger of being manipulated in this grand scheme.
As a side note, some of the action scenes involving Kaspar tend to be a bit farcical, but keeping in mind that he is a clown associated with the magical farce of the circus, it does somehow make sense. After reading those scenes, I couldn’t help but laugh and say, “Wow! What a man!” ;-)
And like Smilla’s Sense of Snow, The Quiet Girl’s also chock-full of those fun and poetic observations. Below’s a brief sampling:
“Children woke up at six-thirty in the morning and shifted directly into fourth gear. Fourteen hours later they rushed straight into sleep at more than a hundred miles an hour without decelerating.”
“The real opportunity in family life was not the security, not the monotony, not the predictability. The real opportunity lay in the fact that sometimes there were no pretenses, no masks, no reservations; suddenly everybody took out his earplugs, it was quiet, and one could hear the others as they really were.”
“Already the ground frost was so thick he could feel the cold through the soles of his shoes. The girl must have a different metabolism from him; in her thin sweater she seemed to be carrying summer around with her.”
“She looked at him. As if she wanted to determine his molecular weight.”
“The city sounded like a single organism. It had been up early, and now it was weary. Now it sank down into the furniture, heavy as a moving man. And under the weight he heard the uneasiness that is always there, because yet another day is over, and what was accomplished, where are we headed?” -
The blurbs on the back of this book reference it as being a thriller and hard to put down. It is only a thriller in the sense you have no idea what’s going on, it’s hard to follow until the last 100 pages. Prior to that, incredibly easy to put down I’ll be honest.
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Завершила знакомство со всеми романами датского писателя, прочитав его "Тишин��". Признаться, я мучила эту книгу с декабря прошлого года, читая перед сном понемногу, чтобы никуда не сбежать от нее, но добить смогла только в самолете над Атлантикой в июле.
Такое терпение и настойчивость в желании прочесть книгу могу объяснить тем, что предыдущие три романа Питера Хёга давались мне с разной долей интереса, но в целом произвели достойное впечатление. Смесь детектива, триллера, социальной психологии и философии - под каждой обложкой. Своеобразный стиль автора не оставляет равнодушной, независимо от того, оказывается ли близким сюжет произведения, нравятся ли его персонажи. В каждом романе Хёга я оставила немало "заметок на полях" и этот не стал исключением.
Интересно, что после 10 лет молчания и путешествий по миру Питер Хег (заработавший солидное состояние на экранизации “Фрекен Смилла и ее чувство снега”) вернулся к людям из отшельничества. В романе "Тишина" так и чувствуется, что перо автора пропиталось восточной философией, иронией над западным миром, снисходительным отношением к человеческим слабостям и порокам.
Но "моей" книгой роман не стал, это довольно странная-странная книга, перечитывать не буду точно, хотя и порекомендую любителям современной скандинавской литературы. Пишет он красиво, немного путанно, но если вас не пугает витиеватая философия, то может оказаться, что Хёг как раз ваш автор.
Я с интересом буду ждать, выпустит ли он что-нибудь еще из-под пера. -
I loved Borderliners and The Woman and the Ape. Hoeg's style is still there but I got a little exhausted, and also misled, by every. single. moment. being super suspenseful and high-octane. I know to expect that Hoeg protagonists will have practically superhuman abilities, to stay awake not eating for a week, to get shot and act like it's nothing, etc. But the reader doesn't have that kind of stamina. The reader wants to be able to figure out how close we are to the climax. You can't in this book because it's all climax.
Oh, also I kind of have a beef with authors (I'm looking at like half the winners of the Booker prize here. For some reason the Booker committee is super into this.) who have long descriptions of musical pieces. I can really dig the acoustic and musical stuff in this book but at a certain point I can only read so much description of something that I can't hear. Even if it's about a particular piece of music and I know that piece, there's no way to match up the description with which part of the piece they may be talking about. If music plays such a huge role in your story, maybe you should consider screen writing.
I wasn't dismayed when my boyfriend, not a big reader, borrowed this book because he found the writing really interesting (he was totally thrown off by the shaky plot and weird timeline and will probably never borrow another book from me), but I would strongly urge people to try a different one of the author's books. -
Die Handlungsstränge dieser Geschichte sind total verworren geflochten, enthalten wirre, völlig inkonsistente Zeit-, Szenen- und zu allem Überfluss auch noch Gedankensprünge. Personen werden in dieser Umgebung nicht beim Namen genannt sondern andauernd unterschiedlich beschrieben und dann sucht man auch noch bei den vielen dänischen Ortsbeschreibungen und -namen der Szenen hinten im Anhang auf der Detail-Karte und dem Personenregister ständig nach den fehlenden Hintergrundinformationen.
Dadurch geht dem Leser der phantastischen Geschichte sowohl inhaltlicher Kontext, Vorstellungskraft, als auch komplett die Spannung verloren. Das Buch wird statt mysteriös nur extrem mühsam. Das hasse ich wirklich
Eigentlich ist es sehr schade, denn der Autor kann sprachlich sehr gut fabulieren, das Thema Töne und Musik der Menschen und Dinge interessiert mich sehr und die Geschichte hat letztendlich, wenn man sie völlig anders erzählen würde, durchaus auch sehr viel Potenzial.
Alles in allem eine komplette Enttäuschung - (pseudo)intellektuell arrangiert - ich bin wirklich froh, dass es vorbei ist. -
Again, a masterpiece by Hoeg. This book was wery engaging and it had a flow that carried me through the book with ease. The protagonist, Kaspar Krone, is an intriguing character and Hoeg excels in describing the world through his eyes and ears.
All the important aspects of a good story are present in the book: adventure, romance, love, sex, philosophy, religion and music. As is often the case with great art, this book offers a new way to look at world. The protagonist perceives the world mostly through hearing, and music has an important role in his worldview. Hoeg's ability to use classic music as an element of his story is very impressive and shows the amount of work put into writing this book.
After finishing the book, I was not sure wether to give it four or five stars. The final pages of book felt at first a bit bland, after very intensive and touching events. However, I believe that this is one of those books that have potential for several readings. Maybe the ending feels different when I read this book next time, in another point of my life.
