"The Quiet Girl"
by Peter Høeg
Link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Quiet-Girl-Peter-Hoeg/dp/0099507358/
Reading history and reviews
Finished on 22nd July 2012
Many years ago I remember enjoying Høeg's thriller Smilla's Feeling for Snow and it's heroine's unusual gift. The protagonist of "The Quiet Girl", Kaspar Krone, is another character with an unusual gift - this time a sense of the musical sound of people and places - although he is unusual in many other ways, not least in that he is an internationally famously circus clown under threat of deportation from Denmark to Spain for unpaid taxes. Against this backdrop Kaspar becomes involved in a plot which involves an order of nuns, a shadowy conspiracy and a group of children with strange powers.
I enjoyed reading "The Quiet Girl" although at times I found myself lost in the coils of the plot and felt that I missed a lot of subtle (or maybe not so subtle) details. But the book moves at a fair pace, and Høeg has a knack for creating fascinating and compelling characters - aside from Kaspar there are various other unusual people throughout the story, and it was these that kept me reading. I think if I were to read it again I'd maybe pay more attention to the plot details though.