Borderliners

I knew nothing about this book before picking it up; I had intended to get Miss Smilla's Sense of Snow but it was not available, so I got this instead. What an engrossing book. An unreliable narrator tells his tale of an abusive boarding school whose staff are fixated on social experiments on psychologically damaged children through nonlinear storytelling. It's like an unintentional mystery, where we are trying to figure out what is happening behind the scenes at this school, but the point of the book isn't that but the damage done to the fragile students there. This at first feels dystopic, like Never Let Me Go perhaps, but it isn't set in a speculative future. This is real.

I think this book means more to Peter Hoeg than anyone else; show more it feels like it was a catharsis for him to write it. Sometimes there are elements of the book that don't add much or are more confusing than anything, but they clearly mean something to him if not to readers. I'd be very interested to know how much is autobiographical. It certainly feels like a lot of it is.

This is not an easy book to read. You have to really pay attention due to the unreliable narration and frequent time jumps. Each time I came back to the book, I had to reorient myself to it. But it's a highly engrossing book for the dedicated reader. Recommended. show less

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.

Non so, non capisco perché non scatta più il feeling con Høeg. Eppure sotto certi aspetti penso che questo libro sia veramente bello. Racconta di alcuni bambini in lotta contro il mondo, in particolare il mondo degli adulti. Racconta della "malattia del tempo", di quanto siamo ossessionati dal suo scorrere, sia nel quotidiano (appuntamenti, ritardi, attese) che a lungo termine (crescere, invecchiare...): quanto mai attuale, direi. E' un romanzo, almeno in parte, autobiografico (così almeno ho letto nella quarta di copertina), la prosa è scorrevole, i protagonisti son bei personaggi, ragazzi difficili, ribelli, ma con gran cuore, e speranze, e coraggio. Allora? Perché mi è solo piaciucchiato questo romanzo? Non so, non riesco show more proprio a spiegarmelo!
http://www.naufragio.it/iltempodileggere/9935 show less

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.

I thought I'd give Peter Høeg another go despite the weird debacle that was the second half of Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow as I picked this up cheaply from a local charity shop. Not the best idea I've ever had. I hope, in a way, that it is largely because of a poor, possibly overly-literal translation that Borderliners is such an unpleasant, bewildering mess. The English text is awkward in the extreme: abrupt sentence fragments abound and a weird alternation of "me", "you" and "one" to refer to the first person narrator does nothing to alleviate the overall confusion. Maybe that was intentional; maybe the character is supposed to come over as intensely fragmented, but I just found it irritating.

What was ultimately galling were the show more brief flashes of brilliance that hinted at how good this could have been, although even here the chopped up sentences are aggravating:

There could be a veil of mist in the mornings at the children's home, a white smoke ascending from the earth. At the point where it met the sunlight from heaven, dewdrops hung in the spider's web - big with curved, reversed reflections of the white strands and the misty grass and your own face. As though small globular universes were being born where the water from the earth met the fire from heaven. And somewhere in the silent beauty of these curved, looking-glass worlds you recognised yourself because of the crew cut. show less

Høeg’s 1992 novel Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow was an international sensation, and rightly so, and was made into a film directed by Bille August and starring Julia Ormond and Gabriel Byrne. Borderliners was Høeg’s next novel (he had published two before Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow), and it’s a very different novel. Peter, the narrator, and Katerina and August are all pupils at a private school in the 1970s. All three are orphans – Peter has spent most of his life in children’s homes, Katerina’s parents died shortly before she was sent to the school, and August is on licence after killing his abusive parents. Shortly after his arrival at the school, Peter realises that everything in it is governed by schedule – show more he thinks of it as governed by time – and he theorises that this generates a particular way of seeing the world, which is what leads to the school’s success (it boasts a prime minister among its alumni). Although the three are not supposed to mingle, and make a secret of their friendship, they pass notes back and forth, meet in odd corners, and generally try to upset the school’s effect on themselves. August proves a handful, as he erupts into violence when threatened. Readers going into Borderliners expecting something like Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow will be disappointed – even Wikipedia states that Høeg’s novels tend to defy easy categorisation. Fortunately, I already knew this going in, although it’s certainly true Borderliners doesn’t have the immediate appeal of the earlier novel. Nonetheless, Høeg is an author whose work is worth exploring, I think. show less

This is a book about a young juvenile delinquent who gets accepted into a fancy private boarding school. At first, its a godsend, but things keep getting weirder. Strange happenings, weird schedules, and even stranger people keep showing up. The book kept me interested, but I'm not sure I liked the ending.

Once the mystery was revealed, it was a bit of a let down - it didn't make sense. As for the leading character, I'm still not sure what the first person narrative, after the events of the school, is all about.

I'm assuming this is a bit of lost in translation, as well a product of the times.

Overall, its well written, but the plot was over the top with a mystery that was inconsistent once revealed.