Synopsis
The first novel in more than a decade from the internationally acclaimed, bestselling author of Smilla's Sense of Snow
The Washington Post - Keith Donohue
Kasper Krone, the unlikely hero of Peter Hoeg's new thriller, is a clown. The Quiet Girl, set in a contemporary Copenhagen shaken by earthquake and flood, is an equally unlikely page-turner: the thriller as philosophical novel and postmodern comedy…But like the mystical music always there beyond our hearing, the essence of the novel hides within the object of Kasper's quest. The missing quiet girl, KlaraMaria, is an old soul in a 10-year-old body. She balances the frenzy and chaos of Kasper's life. Slowly, their short history unspools…and a great love story is born, the true subject of The Quiet Girl, the love shared between a man and a child, platonic, unselfish and powerfully redemptive…That Hoeg splices together so many conventions should come as no surprise to readers of Smilla's Sense of Snow, which was his first novel to be published in English. Treat The Quiet Girl as a thriller, and you'll sprint happily to its unexpected and enigmatic ending. Treat the novel as a love story, and you may be surprised by the deep silence of its final pages.