Borderliners (1993)

Very weird. ( )

Well I wouldn't recommend this if you are looking for a "happy" read. It is the 1970's and a young boy who has been in various institutions is now a boarder at an experimental school. There is a very regimented regime and, now he is suffering nightmares and sleeplessness, he is having trouble. Asked to keep an eye on a new boy things come to a climactic conclusion as they rebel against the rules. The headmaster believes what he is doing will fit these damaged children into society but events spiral in ways he cannot control.

This is a very bleak look at life and the attempt to control lives. Peter Høeg is a talented writer and we do get a sense of character and place. This is a very thought provoking book and I am glad to have read it. ( )

After reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, and raving about it to a friend, he suggested I read this. Being a child psychologist I guess it was required reading material for him. It is thought to be partly autobiographical, but Mr Hoeg himself is a bit of a recluse (not surprising if he experienced any of the psychological bullying that the 'Peter' in the book did).

Biehl, the headmaster of a school for the gifted takes in three 'troubled children' with completely different needs, and tries to integrate them into 'normal' society. This pseudoscientific trial uses incredibly strict routine, where every part of their lives is controlled by the school bell, and is quite frightening in it's similarity to a prison or even a hospital. There is also suggestion of quite serious physical and psychological abuse, including the fascinating use of the pauses in speech as threat.

Although the first-person style is quite difficult to follow I do think it was the only way to decribe these twisted forms of abuse, any other would have sounded like one of these awful 'Tragic Life Stories' that are all the rage at the moment. Instead there is a real excitement and interest as to whether these children manage to escape the inevitable life of institutions or not.

Just an addition: I felt a real sadness (as I often do with a well plotted villain) for Biehl. ( )

Borderliners is told from the perspective of an orphan named Peter Høeg who is reflecting back on his youth as an adult. He had been shifted around from institution to institution all his life and became adept at doing what he needed to to survive the bullying, neglect and privation of the orphanages and detention centers. After a particularly brutal incident, he is transferred to a private school full of children from good homes where he and several other "borderliners" (that is children who are not expected to succeed) are integrated in with the other children.

Peter continues to keep his head down and work through this new situation but suddenly finds himself unable to sleep at night -- making him very tired in the morning and consistently late for class, something that is not tolerated at the school. The administration puts him in charge of a new student, August, a boy who is extremely troubled and often dangerous to himself and others, and then they meet Katarina, a previously "normal" student at the school who has recently lost both her parents and also finds herself unstuck from the routines of the school. The three children work together to look after one another and discover the secret plan behind the institution.

This book takes some work to get into. Not all that much happens (although what does happen is often very exciting), and the book delves into philosophical questions of time, education, youth, and individuality that might bore some readers. However: if you have a little patience, it really really pays off. I loved this book, and I still find myself thinking through some of the ideas about time and revisiting the images and characters of the book.

[full review here: http://spacebeer.blogspot.com/2009/05/borderliners-1993.html ] ( )

This is a beautiful, sad novel about how we seek to make safe places for ourselves even when we are caught in the machinery of the world, the way we have to play at growing to be able to grow, and the way that even the good intentions of those who rule us can go awry.

My only wish is that the reader of the audiobook hadn't felt it necessary to draw out every instance of the word "time." He really walloped us over the head with that word. ( )