What do readers think of The Quiet Girl by Peter Hoeg? Write your own review.

Ahh, this was a baffling and disappointing novel. Reading it reminded me of James Joyce's Ulysses (and I loath James Joyce). The main character, Kasper Krone, debt-ridden Danish celebrity clown, is clever, physically adept, and blessed (or cursed) with extraordinary hearing. But he is not endearing, and with his fits of violence, particularly toward the woman he allegedly loves, is not even particularly likable. The mysterious children are shadowed figures and mostly unnamed, save for the oddly self-possessed KlaraMaria. Classical music, especially works by Bach, are endlessly referenced in the novel, and I had the sense that Hoeg wrote the novel -- or composed it -- the same way a composer would write a score of music. It does have a lyrical sense to it. But if I had to describe the novel in three words, I'd say: Ambitious, but unsatisfying.

As a musician I had great hopes for this book, and especially for the main character. There were moments of real insight, but I felt that the plot was very difficult to follow. After a while I just wanted to get to the end, not to find out what happens, but to just finish! Not one of Peter Hoeg's best efforts.

I loved Smilla’s Sense of Snow and so started reading The Quiet Girl with great anticipation. I gave it 125 pages and had to stop reading. The story so disjointed and the characters so enigmatic and opaque that I lost all interest. The writing itself is bad (writer or translator?). I hope the editor of this American edition fixes the hundreds of sentence fragments. They don’t work. In most cases, just taking out a few periods and putting the fragments together make perfectly good sentences. This is all too bad. The book has potential. I saw hints of the kind of writing that made Smilla’s Sense of Snow so compelling. For example, this sentence resonated: “When for a moment we let ourselves feel deep, sudden joy or sudden sorrow, reality begins to disintegrate.” Some wonderful insights. Terrible book. (My own sentence fragments!)