The Susan effect by Peter Hoeg.
Susan Svendsen has an unusual talent. She is an expert in finding out secrets. People feel compelled to confide in her and unwittingly confess their innermost thoughts. Her whole life, she has exploited this talent, but now her family is in jeopardy and there is a prison sentence hanging over her head.
Great read. 4*.

The Susan Effect is a long-winded, confusing story of Susan; a woman with a special ability that makes people be completely honest and open with her. When people fall under "The Effect", they feel compelled to tell Susan things about themselves; things they've never told anyone else, secrets and their true feelings. Over the years Susan has learned to exploit her ability to build the life she wants for herself and her family. Her husband Laban has his own "ability" that he can combine with Susan's "effect" to allow them both to manipulate people. Susan and Laban have twin teenager children; daughter Thit and son Harald. As a family unit, they hone their abilities as one.

My first issue with this book is that absolutely none of the characters are likeable or relate-able. Susan especially is an awful character. I think she is meant to be strong and fiercely independent but she is just awful. Selfish and manipulative, she treats everyone as if they are beneath her - the part about what she said to her children's fellow nursery parents infuriated me. She uses men for her own sexual gratification and offers her husband no affection or attention. They talk about divorce multiple times but don't seem to actually have any intention of doing it. Their entire family dynamic is odd and unbelievable.

The abilities of the family as a unit are confusing and don't seem to make sense. All this talk of "turning left" ... what!?!! I understood what Susan's ability was but felt that the ability of Laban and the children was made overly complex and I couldn't really grasp what they were trying to achieve.

The plot of the book is unbelievable and not in a good way. I don't want to spoil it for anyone else wanting to read the book but when I finally finished it (after almost giving up on it 4/5 times!) I felt that about 75% of the book was completely pointless unrelated filler. When you look at what exactly happened and the reasons why things happened, I couldn't help but look at it like that. If the 75% was valuable plot lines or backstory then I'm sure they would've contributed and made the book more enjoyable but I just found it dull, boring nonsense that I was tempted to skim-read.

This review seems so harsh and I really don't like being so negative and mean but this is not an enjoyable book for me. It's unnecessarily complicated, long-winded and unbelievable on so many different levels that I could not get into it at all.

I gave The Susan Effect 2 stars because while I didn't enjoy it, the secret reason for everything in the book (I feel) does actually have the potential to happen. This could've been a much better book but I was frustrated and annoyed by a book that just wasn't enjoyable.

Thank you to the author, NetGalley and publisher for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Excellent book, well written with an exciting plot. I had to read it a second time. The spikey relationship between the mother and father and the very special abilities they each kept my interest.

Thanks for the opportunity to have read this strangely intriguing read. This was my first book by Peter Hoeg and I hope to read more in the future.

I am struggling to review this, as whilst I enjoyed some of it, I found reading this book quite hard work. Maybe it was the translation rather than the style of writing or perhaps this one just wasn't a book for me.

Hoeg certainly knows how to write original novels. In The Susan Effect we find ourselves in the midst of a very unique family who all ,to a greater or lesser extent, appear able, telepathically' to have an "effect" on other people. This exhibits itself when the other party, without knowing why, either says or does something they wouldn't normally . Susan is a physicist whose every action is driven by logic. This both helps and hinders her as she searches for answers to what a mysterious panel of twelve experts were working on with the Danish Government. Someone is killing of these twelve and Susan is absolutely determined to solve conundrum even if it means putting her family in danger. Fortunately the family all being able to practise the " effect" means they survive against all the odds. At times funny, at times grim but consistently entertaining and gripping, this book is thoroughly refreshing read with an exceptionally original plot.

Genius.

Think: The Incredibles except the Svendsen family's powers are not physical but of the mind. Psychological, Intellectual, Manipulative.

Susan has a power, just being in her proximity will inspire an urge within you to tell her something that's burdening you. A secret, a guilty confession. Always the truth. They call it the Susan Effect. When she is with her husband, the Effect is at its most powerful. Together they have two children, twins, who are also remarkably gifted. They put the children first. Always... And with the looming threat of her family facing imprisonment, their love is put to the test.

'Quantum physics has a theory that reality is forever completing itself and making itself whole'

With this book, every belief, realisation, discovery was constantly shifting. With every passing obstacle, a new reality yet to be understood. Pieces put together, paradigms rejected, new ones created... A new world, and a new world order, at the very centre of it: The Future Commission. To save her family, Susan must obtain some highly classified information.

Susan's ability borders just on the brink of believable. But if you, the reader, believe in the possibility... Well then, this book promises to be an unforgettable experience. Høeg writes with sophistication, and a passion for the study of physics. This is action filled with a large dose of dry humour. At times you are left questioning Susan's sanity or reeling at what you learn about her. This book is full of surprises and it remains unpredictable till its end.

I received this book through NetGalley.

Miss Susan’s feeling for empathy

I really liked Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, so I really liked this. Why? Because it follows a very similar narrative arc. Imagine a Smilla who is a married mother in her early 40s and you have Susan. Like Smilla, Susan has a gift; when people are with her, they cannot help but confess the truth and reveal their feelings. Her talented, difficult family, composer husband, 16 years old twin boy and girl, also have gifts and together they fight an anarchic war against the entrenched plots of an establishment conspiracy.

Even if the plot is tosh (and all the science), this is so well written, remaining just on the right side of plausibility (only just!), so suffused with verve, energy and imagination that it charmed me utterly. I loved the characterisation, especially of Susan’s apparently dysfunctional family. I loved the very clever and witty narrative, Susan’s own acerbic repartee, the unravelling of the labyrinthine plot. A pleasurable aspect of the novel, also, is the picture drawn of Copenhagen, a city which is almost a character in itself, and which the author portrays with great affection. Thank you Mr Hoeg.

Loved this!! Intruiging plot-line and intelligent writing. The concept was credible although played out awkwardly at the end of the novel. This was not an easy book to gain a foothold but well worth the time.

There are lots of reviews of this book, some even favourable, so I’m using that fact to justify not bothering to write much of one myself. Much like I couldn’t be bothered to persevere with this largely (to me, at least) incomprehensible and essentially strange and rather silly novel.

I'm not quite sure how to categorise this book. Thriller, mystery, family drama with a sci-fi or paranormal edge? Hmm, not sure. I did enjoy it though and the dystopian elements are quite original. A good read that may make you think about what this world could end up like if we are not careful.

Can't fault this for pacing and fun - even though the science might be dodgy at times, the characters occasionally unlikeable. The premise is intriguing, although somewhat silly. The author does an excellent job of pushing that premise to its utter limits. Sheer delight.

Having really loved Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow I had high hopes for this book but I found it completely impenetrable. I think I will try again in the future and am not dismissing it yet!

Still challenged by the inevitable comparison to Smilla

Like many, I suspect, I was utterly entranced by Hoeg’s 1992 novel, Miss Smilla’s Feeling For Snow. In fact, it was Miss Smilla which introduced me to the dark reflective world of Scandi Crime Fiction at all. The combination of crime played out not in the domestic field, but with wider political, cultural, environmental issues, was fascinating. Hoeg himself has, clearly, a strong sense of intangible forces and mysticism within his nature, which was quite a powerful mix in that book.

Unfortunately (for this reader) no subsequent book quite manages to bring the various strands of his writing together. A major weakness in his writing, in my opinion, is what one might think of as the bam bam ultra violent action sequences. And I’m afraid to say this was also very much the case in this book,

The premise was interesting. The central character, Susan, is possessed of a kind of superpower – empathetic charisma, which makes everyone trust her and unburden themselves to her. Susan is a physicist, and her particular skill is subject to scientific investigation. Alongside this, some decades ago, a group of particularly intelligent, creative young people were gathered together to predict and envisage the future ‘the Futures Commission’. Many of their (largely dystopian) visions turned out to be very accurate. There was something quite mysterious about the group, some kind of conspiracy. Also, various violent deaths. Susan herself, and her almost equally strangely powerful and manipulatively charismatic husband and teenaged twins, have fallen foul of the authorities. Effectively they are bribed and emotionally blackmailed by certain highly influential people to discover what certain other highly influential people are up to. It’s a fairly classic unravelling of conspiracy, with superpowers and a lot of violence. And sex.

There is quite a lot of interesting ‘about stuff’ but the stitching together with regular amounts of action hero gore and splatter gets remarkably silly and not a little tedious Our feisty, super intelligent central character and her similarly slightly strange off the wallish family get pitted against a kind of classic Terminator type psychotic efficient killer, groomed to be so by one of the various influential high ups. There are a number of twists and turns, but the problem is that it almost doesn’t matter very much, as things very quickly just get too fantastical. The combination of action girl hero comic and the nefarious doings of the power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely conspiracies, with a hefty slug of new age mysticism ends up as a bit of a botch. I found myself wishing a ruthless editor with a red pen had done a lot of work, particularly as the book approached its ending

I received this as an ARC from the publisher, via NetGalley

I loved Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow which was published way back so I was really looking forward to reading Peter Høeg’s latest offering and it didn’t disappoint. The story follows the somewhat dysfunctional Svendsen family: Susan, a scientist, Laban, a composer, and their twins, Thit and Harald. All four have got themselves into bother in India and in exchange for being rescued Susan is asked to help the Danish government discover the membership of the Danish Parliamentary Future Commission and the minutes of its two final meetings. Susan has been approached because she has an ‘effect’ on people which encourages them to open up to her and share their innermost thoughts. Susan says she evokes sincerity. To a lesser extent the rest of her family also possess this ability. The novel follows Susan’s attempts to uncover the role of the Future Commission and its members.

The novel would be best described as a thriller with a lot of physics and humour thrown in. I really liked Susan, she isn’t unlike Miss Smilla. She is feisty, very, very funny and a little amoral. The other members of the family are equally well drawn characters. These factors along with a cracking good story make this a very readable book.

I received a complimentary copy of the book from NetGalley and publisher in exchange for an honest review. Thank you.

A family returns from India in various forms of trouble ranging from criminal (Susan and her son Harald) to the socially unacceptable (the daughter Thit, and the husband - separately!) Susan is a physicist, married to Laban a star music composer and conductor and together they have 16 year old twins. Susan returns to Copenhagen where the powerful Thorkeld Hegn offers her a way out of their problems and a return to normal life - All she has to do is find out the names of some individuals who attended a meeting and the last 2 sets of minutes of those meetings. The family’s quest to obtain this information quickly turns extremely dangerous and their lives are endangered from the outset.

This is a fantasy set in Denmark in the near future; so some technological inaccuracies and over- presumptions can be excused (as who’s to say they’re not possible by then?) I went along with this idea – it certainly made the plot easier in places. Then there’s Susan’s ‘talent’; her (and to a lesser extent, the rest of her family's) strange effect on people: They tell her their deepest feelings/fears/secrets when ‘the effect’ comes into force.

This can either be viewed again as part of the fantasy element of this tale or (for the cynical) it could be said to be an easy method of facilitating the story without having to explain how certain details are discovered by those that need to know. They simply use ‘the effect’ to get people to tell them...

Susan is not a particularly likable character; she seems cold, detached and expresses herself in a sort of pseudo-scientific manner even if she’s discussing what to have for dinner that night. I found this ‘high talk’ rather draining at times, but also dryly entertaining at others. There were some great quotes (and some awful ones). Sometimes it just felt too ‘clever-clever’ by half.

Imagination was stretched to the limit and beyond at times – a particular event where a group of Government Ministers and high level bureaucrats were led away from a top secret vault and led back outside into song by Susan’s husband, and into the car park. Susan is then discovered (hiding in this top secret vault,) by a Chinese delegate who "understands she wants to grab a bit of shuteye on the bottom shelf after a long day." Hmm Oh, that’ll be ‘the effect’ again, handy that…

The book is entertaining but I found it a bit predictable. It was not a comfortable read (but I don’t think it was supposed to be). Interesting future theory dealing with a topic that has captured the imagination of humans since the threat of ‘nuclear war’. I liked it, sort of, but it did not thrill me.

After reading this book I looked at some reviews of it to see if it was just me who didn't really "get" it. It seems I am in the minority but can't help that I'm afraid. I couldn't decide if it was a thriller, a family saga or a si-finread but whither I was not a fan.

The Susan Effect is a crime novel which had more scientific speak and elements of sci-fi than I was expecting it to, having never read any novels by Peter Høeg before. There are a lot of characters, and lots of names to remember, and I think I found it a bit hard to stay focussed.

I can tell that the plot is solid but I wasn’t too keen on the ending, and the story’s scientific focus was just a little too much like hard work for my taste. Saying this, I know lots of other people who’d no doubt absolutely love this novel – I think it just wasn’t quite what I fancied reading at the time and wasn’t quite to my taste.

Susan has a special talent She's an expert in getting people to tell her secrets.They Can't resist confiding in her. But now she's on the verge of a prison sentence plus her whole family are in danger

But then she gets a hard to resist offer. Use her powers one more time and get all charges dropped. To get her life she has to track down the last of a secret think tank, the Future Committee, and the details of their final report. But there are powerful people working against her trying to ensure the details are never found out.

I sort of feel bad giving this two stars. Because I get the feeling it's not the book but me that's the problem. I think I'm just not clever enough to know what's going on. I'd read 5 pages and realise I'd zoned out. Not a word had sunk in. Plus Susan isn't as interesting as I thought she'd be. The narration is so flat and....well let's just say I was pretty bored from start to finish. I don't mind books been cleverer than me (if I did I'd be reading board books all the time) but I need a good story that's got focus and a main character I can be interested in. Sadly I didn't find it here. Just a case of the wrong book for the wrong reader.

I received this from Netgalley for an honest review.

If you enjoyed Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow then I promise you will not be disappointed by The Susan Effect. It' a slightly surreal thriller with an intriguing protagonist and a distinctive, dryly humorous tone.