Borderliners [Import] [Paperback]

Peter; Haveland, B Hoeg (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Harvill Press (1995)
• ISBN-10: 1860460372
• ISBN-13: 978-1860460371
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,683,027 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A chilling and ultimately haunting take on Darwin, October 20, 2000

By 

Angela D. Mitchell "Paranoid PR" (Hobbiton) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Borderliners (Paperback)

(First off, if you haven't already, please don't read the Amazon.com main review/synopsis above -- the synopsis really upsets me by giving away a few absolutely crucial surprises and plot points. Aghgh!)

"Borderliners" is a gorgeous book -- at times a difficult read, but it's one of my all-time favorites. It's a hugely rewarding book in spite of its occasional dryness, although I should warn you that it's not nearly as accessible or humorous as Hoeg's wonderful "Smilla's Sense of Snow" (which partnered a tough-talking, misanthropic and brilliant Greenlandic woman against a mystery she was compelled to solve against overwhelming odds).

However, what "Borderliners" does, and does well, is bring back the here-and-now feelings of adolescence, the longings and fears, the ways in which everything feels more important than it ever will again. "Smilla" may have been laugh-out-loud funny on occasion, but there's nothing funny about a rocky adolescence, a fact Hoeg's characters know all too well. They're intense, intelligent, and pragmatic even in the face of feeling that now is all that matters. (At one lovely and memorable moment, for instance, a character remembers, "That kiss was everything - it was everything.") Ironically, Hoeg's characters in the novel aren't imagining things and do actually uncover some diabolical secrets in the midst of a harsh boarding school and all the adolescent angst, and the school's secrets are too dark and too clever to bring up here.

"Borderliners" is about survivors, adolescence, the urge for survival, and the concept of time. The novel makes a case for the fact that our minds make time travel possible through a simple act of will -- that because the past won't let us go, we can't let go of it, either -- and he means that literally. There are surprises, both moving and sad, that arrive in the book's final chapters, and which still stun me when I look back.

I highly recommend "Borderliners" for anyone seeking a literate and intelligent book off the beaten path, and which mixes ideas from Einstein and Darwin as freely as it mixes metaphors. It's an unforgettable and strange story, beautifully told, and hard to forget.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Haunts the mind, March 23, 2003

By 

E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Borderliners (Paperback)

Danish author Peter Hoeg established himself with the masterful "History of Danish Dreams," a surreal, funny, haunting story that tweaked the boundaries of the real world. "Borderliners" is a bit like that, but starkly real and not very funny at all. it's haunting, surreal, and quite disturbing. Hoeg did a fantastic job with this.

They are the "borderliners": Children who don't fit in, be it for not being smart enough, for having difficulties with others, or just failing to slip into the slots that society has for them. Fourteen-year-old Peter has been in institutions of one sort or another all his life, partly because of his lack of "normality," and is now going to the creepy Biehl's Academy where the "borderline" children mingle with the privileged kids, in obsessively strict surroundings.

There, Peter encounters the wise orphan Katarina, who saw her parents both die -- her mother of cancer, stretching out every second of the last months of her life, and her grieving father, who tried to speed time up. And there's August, a strangely sinister child who harbors a dark secret in his past. The three grow closer, Peter falls for Katarina, and they begin struggling to break free of the strange experiments in social Darwinism being performed at the school.

Given the name of the lead character -- Peter Hoeg -- I can only assume that this is at least partly autobiographical. That may be why the book is so moving and personal-feeling. Like "Danish Dreams," this book contains a lot of surreal philosophy about time, about how people try to either use or avoid the passage of time. This occasionally stops the book dead, but if you can handle that then it won't be a problem.

The book is haunting and eerie, almost dreamlike. Hoeg doesn't overburden the story with too much detail. For example, when Peter and Katarina kiss for the first time, he doesn't describe it -- instead he describes the impact it has on Peter. And the dialogue is just as haunting: "What about the darkness inside people?" "The light will disperse it." "There's not that much light in the entire world."

I could tell that Peter comes from Hoeg's heart, because he's so vivid in his feelings and responses. Katarina is incredibly smart and cool-headed, with thoughts beyond her years; August is both appealing and frightening, since he can be lost or violent at any given time. The supporting characters are all vivid and well-drawn, whether they are bad or good. The Academy itself has an aura of almost horrific control, an amazingly well-written place.

Peter Hoeg is a master storyteller, and "Borderliners" is a book that stuck in my mind for days after I had read it. A creepy, beautifully-told story with wonderful characters.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars PLEASANTLY DISTURBING, April 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Borderliners (Paperback)

Though I do not enjoy suspense-filled literature, I found Borderliners to be extremely interesting, and I literally couldn't put it down. With every page, my mind was ever more focused on the characters' plans and thoughts. Being that I was a 14-year-old attending a private school while I was reading the book, the characters seemed real to me, like people I knew. They weren't flat, and one-dimensional, but complex. The author, Peter Hoeg, did not reveal every thought. The reader can discover things by herself. The anger, remorse, and joy radiated from the actions and dialogue of Peter, Katarina, and August. The characters and setting told the story, not lengthy narrative. The plot was confusing at times, given that Mr. Hoeg intertwined flashbacks with historical tidbits, but once one gets into it, one realizes we are not SUPPOSED to know everything. That is what gives the book its real feeling. We do not know everything that is happening in our lives, either. With all of the twists and turns in the book, the disturbing images, the makeshift families, and the watchful eyes of the superiors, this book makes a wonderful weekend read for anybody, whether they are in or out of school.