SOURCE: Leithauser, Brad. “Thrills and Chills.” New Republic 209, no. 4111 (1 November 1993): 39–41.

In the following review, Leithhauser offers a generally positive assessment of Smilla's Sense of Snow, despite the protagonist's “professorial” narration style.

So many other puzzles beset the reader of Smilla's Sense of Snow that, adrift in its mazes, you almost forget to ask, What type of novel is this? It is a mystery? A techno-thriller? Some mutant species of science fiction? The publishers bill it as a simple thriller, albeit with an exotic setting; they compare it to Gorky Park. If a thriller is what it is, it's the best one I've read in years. And yet, in the attention that it lavishes on peripheral characters who advance the plot only incrementally, in the focus that it places on philosophical questions and in the ultimate indifference that it shows the loose ends of its narrative, the book pays...