Rating: 
Summary: Thoroughly engaging
Review: A man who committed a murder when only a young boy (Danny) is released from prison and encounters the child psychologist (Tom) whose testimony was crucial in having him convicted. Their ongoing relationship and the events taking place in the child psychologists life form the basis for this novel. What is fascinating about it is the thought processes we hear running through Tom's head as he questions his own previous judgement, not just with Danny but also with Lauren (Tom's wife). Barker has very cleverly not tried to put us inside Danny's head (an altogether difficult exercise, surely?) but allowed us to experience Tom's confusion over the limited information that Danny allows himself to reveal. I was in doubt about how things would end right up to the final page. The author doesn't try to answer all the questions (which obviously proves frustrating for some reviewers), keeping the novel at a managable length, but raises enough to keep me thinking about the issues for a long time. Once I started reading I could hardly put it down.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Up to Author's Reputation
Review: Although I have not yet read the much praised Regeneration trilogy, I was knocked out by her early, feminist work exploring the lives of working class women, Union Street and Blow Your House Down.This book just failed to deliver impact or reality, although it attempted to explore interesting issues about child criminals, morality, and the illusive nature of truth and memory. She just didn't seem to put much effort into it. The book seems a mere sketch, and doesn't nearly do justice to the fascinating themes raised. For example, the main character, protagonist, the psychologist, is a completely generic character, so is his wife. It's like maybe because these people were upper middle class, they didn't come to life for the author, so she didn't know how to write them fully. The husband and wife are going through a divorce, but we get no sense of what's at stake, what attracted them to each other, etc, so the whole thing reads like a run of the mill T.V. drama, not a novel. It would have been much more effective if she'd just left this poorly executed material out, and limited the entire work to the tense discussions between Danny, the child criminal, and the shrink, because only these scenes are fully engaging. Well, it just goes to show, you can get away with an awful lot once you've won a couple of major prizes. Shame on her editors, for not urging her to do better. This book could have had a major emotional impact, like so many of her others. As it was, too much of it read like notes for scenes that the author never bothered to write up at all.
Rating:
Summary: Bland
Review: Barker's WWI saga was fantastic. The characters were real and their problems intense. By contrast this book was bland. I never really cared about them, and even though the book was just 200 pages, I could barely finish it. I never really got a grip on Danny, the child criminal. Was he evil? Or just a troubled kid? What was I supposed to conclude? The book is told from the point of view of Tom, the therapist. I have a real problem with four or five pages in the middle of the book when the reader is suddenly in the head of a different character. How come? Was this an editing mistake? It contributes nothing to the book. I simply don't understand what it's doing there.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: Border Crossing is the latest in a long line of psychological thrillers to have hit the high-street bookshelves recently and adds
further weight to the opinion that British writers are in the prime of their literary careers. Having already produced 9 books, Pat Barker demonstrates the rich variety of narratives available with this dangerously realistic tale of a child psychologist and his encounters with one of his former patients. Tom Seymour is the psychologist, recently separated from his wife, who rescues Danny Miller, a notorious child-killer, after he tries to commit suicide by jumping into a river. As their relationship begins to develop and Danny takes Tom further into his confidence, it is apparent that there is something dangerous at work within Miller's mind. When Seymour gave evidence at
Danny's trial he declared him highly disturbed but years later he begins to question this decision, realising there is a fine line
between calculating genius and outright madness. As Tom becomes further entwined into the 'confessional' Danny is determined to give him the local news agencies are informed
that a child-murderer is living in the local area. With the media creating an intense witch-hunt and vigilantes prowling the streets,Miller must flee but Seymour is left with a decision that could affect far more than his professional status. A simply sensational novel, Border Crossing captures the scenes of fear, anger and bewilderment immaculately, maintaining a
breath-taking tempo and capturing the reader's attention, refusing to release it before the final page is turned.
Rating:
Summary: Gripping thriller
Review: Danny Miller commits murder at age 10 and was convicted by the help of the man that saves his life 13 years later. Therapist Tomy Seymour, who testified at Miller's trial, saves Miller from drowning in the opening scenes and spends the rest of the novel figuring out what exactly happened so many years ago. Barker paints a stunning portrait inside the mind of a child murderer, who manipulates every person who tries to help him, especially Seymour. The shirnk re-interviews those close to Miller immediately after he is sent to prison, and the tension builds in a series of therapy sessions he has with Miller. While the climax and the ending were deflating and seem to make the whole exercise a sham and setup by Miller, Barker's writing carries the day and makes this a sensational read.
Rating: 
Summary: I Don't Get It
Review: I read the synopsis for this book in a "Best of.." book list for 2001. It's described as a psychological thriller about a psychiatrist who saves a man from drowning. The catch is the man he saves was once a client of his who he inadvertently helped send away to a correctional institute because of damaging testimony.
Sounds good right? I missed it. I didn't find the book tense at all. Every time it started to work towards something I thought was going to be remotely suspenseful, it petered out. I was really disappointed. In fact about the highest praise I can give it is that at just over two hundred pages it reads like a halfway decent short story. A not terribly exciting short story, but a short story never the less.
Rating:
Summary: Two person play as a novel
Review: I will admit that I listened to this Audio Book on drive to and from Las Angeles to Los Vegas. I thought it a good chance to be introduced to Pat Barker who seems to get such rave reviews. This is basically a two person character study in the guise of a psychological thriller that is not all that thrilling. I found the store interesting enough and the writing crisp, but the
secondary plot of Tom Seymour and his wife seems lost as she walks out of his life just when he is consumed with this former child patient who returns to extract his revenge. Or does he? I will give this a marginal thumbs up because the two main characters are well written and vivid, with Danny Miller the tormented child murderer an excellent character. But in the end I did not find this very satisfying to listen to and doubt I would have finished it if I had picked it up as a book.
Rating:
Summary: Almost
Review: Ms. Pat Barker has written some wonderful books. Many consider her, "Regeneration Trilogy", her best work, and it was the most enjoyable work of hers for me as well. Her newest work, "Border Crossing", was frustrating as it appeared weak only to become very intriguing, however in the end it did not rise to the level of her other works. The book opens with an event that is so unlikely as to seem absurd. Ms. Barker then does a wonderful job of providing the justification for this act and uses it to stage the continuation of a relationship ended 13 years previously. She develops great tension as to the ethical choices a doctor must make, and reconstructs the years of incarceration of a juvenile murderer that is unnerving and populated with some of the best characters she has created. As she has done in the past, she creates and resolves a great many issues in the relatively brief span of 215 pages. When the read is complete the story and some of its elements are not. Critical issues that are seemingly the justification for revaluating the past are brought to the very edge of revelation and then dropped. There is no resolution of the story just a repetition of the original placement of an individual in new circumstances. The story could easily be continued and perhaps that is what she has in mind. I certainly hope this is the case as she has created at least 2 characters that are excellent, one of whom could be the darkest creation of her writing to date.
Rating:
Summary: Surprising page-turner!
Review: Pat Barker has won many awards for her fiction & here it's easy to see why. It's the story of a psychiatrist who accidentally meets a young man he once evaluated...evaluated to say whether he could stand trial. The patient has grown up and wants to talk about his childhood. Meanwhile, the therapist's personal life is falling to pieces. American bestsellers in the genre of your choice are fun reads. Reading a book by an excellent storyteller and writer like Barker points up just how flimsy, vapid, and bland many of those NYT bestsellers are. She has an amazing facillity with language and story construction. Her World War 2 "Regeneration" trilogy won all the awards and got press (mostly in Britain) but try this page turner or "Blow Your House Down." I had to read the latter in one sitting!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent thriller that just missed being great
Review: Pat Barker makes writing seem so easy. Like Muriel Spark, her prose is always crisp, lucid, eloquent and smooth and for these qualities alone, it is always a pleasure to read anything by her. "Border Crossing (BC)", her latest novel, serves up cat and mouse styled mind games played between two protagonists with a shared past whose unlikely connection with each other is revealed after a shocking incident that will alter the course of their lives forever. Barker doesn't waste time setting the scene or building up tension. A distracted Tom Seymour, out on a jog with his wife one evening, witnesses a suicide attempt on the river. It takes him seconds to decide to dive after the man to prevent it. Why did Tom risk his life for a stranger ? Was he responding to the dangers of the moment or the pressures of a crumbling marriage ? This is the sort of question we ask ourselves as the story unfolds. Barker proves she's no novice at writing pyschological thrillers. She skillfully keeps us in a state of anxiety and suspense throughout. There's also a palpable smell of danger in the air and a threat of violence that never quite breaks out. As a thriller, BC works because it's highly absorbing and gripping. Pity the novel never quite develops beyond establishing whether or not Danny committed the murder he was convicted for. Or whether Danny is the master of deception those who comes into contact with him say he is. We do get definitive answers to these questions. We even get to observe and make our own judgements about the horror of society's response to juvenile crime and its aftermath. That Barker never used Danny to hold the mirror to his nemesis' soul and allowed us readers to truly get under Tom's skin is something of a disappointment. BC is a wonderfully accomplished novel. It could have been great one had Barker mined its premise for its full potential. I would give this four and a half stars rating if I could. If not, it's closer to five than four stars. One of the best novels to have been published in 2001.
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