The Quiet Girl: A Novel [Hardcover]

Peter Hoeg (Author), Nadia Christensen (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 30, 2007

Set in Denmark in the here and now, The Quiet Girl centers around Kaspar Krone, a world-renowned circus clown with a deep love for the music of Johan Sebastian Bach, and an even deeper gambling debt. Wanted for tax evasion and on the verge of extradition, Krone is drafted into the service of a mysterious order of nuns who promise him reprieve from the international authorities in return for his help safeguarding a group of children with mystical abilities—abilities that Krone also shares. When one of the children goes missing, Krone sets off to find the young girl and bring her back, making a shocking series of discoveries along the way about her identity and the true intentions of his young wards. The result is a fast-paced, philosophical thriller blending social realism with the literary fantastic and pitting art and spirituality against corporate interests and nothing less than the will to war by the industrialized world. The Quiet Girl is a masterful, inventive novel that marks the triumphal return of one of the great writers of the international literary world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Høeg built his bestselling mystery, Smilla's Sense of Snow, around the science of ice. In this labyrinthine, intellectual thriller, Høeg focuses on the nature of sound, and in particular the music of Bach. In a near future where an earthquake and resulting flood have submerged a portion of the city of Copenhagen, Kasper Krone, a world-famous clown and passionate Bach fan, is about to be deported for not paying his taxes. But an official in a secret government agency known as Department H offers to make the charges disappear if Krone will help them locate a young girl, KlaraMaria, who was once his student and shares his peculiar psychic abilities. The blend of science, erudition and slow revelations could only have been written by Høeg, and will appeal to his many fans and other readers with a taste for the literary offbeat. (Nov.)
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From Bookmarks Magazine

When first published in Denmark, The Quiet Girl -- a thriller and love story with elements of magical realism -- provoked debate between conservative and liberal critics; the former accused Peter Høeg of literary pretension, while the latter praised his experimental techniques. No such dispute divided American critics, who embraced this remarkable novel: from the quirky characters, gripping action, compelling settings, and eloquent writing to the author's impressive ruminations on philosophy, pop culture, earthquakes, music, and feminist theology. British critics, citing dense, labyrinthine passages and an overly ornate style, greeted the novel only slightly less enthusiastically. Compared to Høeg's masterpiece Smilla's Sense of Snow, The Quiet Girl is a small jewel of avant-garde literature.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 424 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (October 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374263698
• ISBN-13: 978-0374263690
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #847,255 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Kasper's Sense of Sound, November 4, 2007

By 

Tom S. "filmfan3" (New York City) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Quiet Girl: A Novel (Hardcover)

The new novel by the author of SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW is demanding, elliptical, tangential, confusing, and not always grounded in reality. In other words, it's difficult to read. Set in Copenhagen in the near future, after a natural disaster has destroyed much of the city, it concerns Kasper Krone, a 42-year-old circus clown/violinist/psychic healer/gambling addict/con artist/womanizer/tax dodger/Bach fanatic (I'm not making this up) with a rare form of ESP: he can "hear" the natural "music" that emanates from everyone and everything (I'm not making this up, either). He is particularly good at psychic healing, and his gift works best on children. One child in particular--a little girl who shares his powers of ESP, who is being held against her will by a secret government organization that wants to use her abilities for sinister purposes. She gets a message to Kasper, and he decides to locate her and rescue her from the bad guys using all of his talents (listed above), with the help of his dying father, some weird circus colleagues, and at least three angry ex-girlfriends. Meanwhile, some *other* sinister people are trying to deport him or imprison him, apparently for unpaid taxes. Did I mention the group of kids straight out of VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED who can manipulate the time/space continuum? Well, he has to rescue them, too....

As you can see, the plot is convoluted, and Hoeg's writing style is not always easy to follow, even in Nadia Christensen's (presumably) faithful translation from Danish. And Kasper Krone is, by any definition, a creep and a loser. But--like Smilla before him--he's oddly fascinating, and his story is full of surprises. I stayed with this offbeat novel long after I would normally have given up in despair, and I'm glad I did. It's not as enjoyable as SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW (which is why I gave it 4 stars instead of 5), but it's definitely worth a look. If you're in the mood for a bizarre, maddening, challenging, exciting suspense story unlike anything else on the market, try it.

32 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Perhaps another translator?, January 5, 2008

By 

Huntinghouse - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Quiet Girl: A Novel (Hardcover)

Peter Høeg's previous novel, SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW, is on my top ten list of all time favorite novels. THE QUIET GIRL won't be, not because of the plot but because of the English language. SMILLA was translated by Tiina Nunnally for the US market and GIRL by Nadia Christensen. SMILLA'S US translation turned the unknown Høeg into an international best-seller and won Nunnally the top prize given by American translators, a prize not given every year. I happened on a copy of the UK translation of SMILLA in London a few years ago and read it to compare to Nunnally's. Nunnally's English was more fluid, less awkward and beautifully poetic in places, that all-too-rare synchronicity of author and translator. Logic would have dictated that Nunnally should have translated GIRL but Høeg, who does not speak English well, had not liked Nunnally's translation so another translator was chosen. A large mistake, I feel, for the same problem of language that is awkward, flat or imprecise that marked the UK edition of SMILLA afflicts GIRL. An author is always at the mercy of a translator; it's too bad that Høeg didn't appreciate the "mercy" Nunnally showed SMILLA.

25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "I had a deal with SheAlmighty. To play all the notes. Including the black ones.", November 5, 2007

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Quiet Girl: A Novel (Hardcover)

Peter Hoeg's first novel in ten years takes the reader on a trip through an almost psychedelic world of circus clowns, children with mystical abilities, powerful nuns, evil financiers, mysterious security agencies, and bizarre foundations. Kasper Krone, a circus clown, has discovered that "SheAlmighty has tuned each person in a musical key," and he is able to hear the music that SheAlmighty has created for each person. By tapping into the music of people's psyches, he can understand their moods and thoughts. Often the music he hears emanating from those around him is that of Bach, the ebb and flow of a person's inner spirit paralleling the changing moods of specific Bach masterpieces.

Complex and sometimes mystifying, The Quiet Girl builds its non-linear "story" through impressionistic scenes, presented seemingly at random from the past, present, future, and even the imagination. It is up to the reader to create a narrative from scenes-out-of-sequence as the thinly drawn characters overlap and additional information is revealed, an often frustrating effort.

Kasper is being investigated for tax evasion and is about to be deported from Denmark to Spain. As he deals with governmental officials from Department H and other mysterious departments, people from the circus who may or may not want to help him, and the mysterious Rabia Institute, a convent of Praying Sisters, he, like the reader, tries to make sense of the world around him. When he sees a small girl, KlaraMaria, with her "family," she claims, almost telepathically, that she has been kidnapped and wants Kasper to help her. Eventually, he learns that the nuns from the Rabia Institute have been protecting a group of children, including KlaraMaria, believing that "Some children are born with a gift for coming close to God faster than others." All are possessed of mystic gifts, and a group of evil men, wanting to use these children for their own unstated purposes, have kidnapped six of them from around the world. The nuns seek Kasper's help.

As he searches for the missing children, Kasper encounters mortal dangers. He does not know whom he can trust, and neither does the reader. A large cast of characters, none of whom are fully developed, keeps the mystery high but the reader's ability to identify with Kasper low, and when the grand finale finally occurs, and the loose ends get tied up, the reader may feel a sense of letdown by the coincidences. Hoeg's exploration of the science of sound as the key to understanding man's connections to the universe shows us a reality that is often violent and discordant. Love is fragile and fraught with peril, and the answers to life's biggest questions are often tantalizingly out of reach. Still, man must soldier on, trusting that SheAlmighty has a grander plan, a greater symphony underlying our individual fates. n Mary Whipple

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