Rating: Summary: A chilling and ultimately haunting take on Darwin Review: (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.
Rating: Summary: A CLASSIC..... period. Review: An amazing and perfect work. In my opinion, the most brilliantly written book ever printed in the English language. HIGHEST PRAISE!
Rating: Summary: Intense, claustrophobic, poetic Review: At once takes the reader into the mind of an orphan, both as the child he was and the adult he is now in therapy. Both child and adult try to understand the why of an awful life lived without affection. There must be reasons for where the child is sent at each time in his life and, at fourteen, he begins to formulate an unreal structure to make sense of it all. Each intense, claustrophobic paragraph takes the boy closer to an understanding of the mysteries of his dreadful world. Each sentence is carefully and wonderfully written and must be read slowly and carefully. Not a casual read.
Rating: Summary: One Child's View Review: At once, a philosophical examination of the notions of time and Darwinism, and a child's exploration of the pressures our society puts on its young. Peter Hoeg vividly captures one child's struggle with the concepts of a grown-up world. Hoeg explores the child's need to understand the purposes and motivations behind the familiar institutions of school and family. In trying to grasp the meaning behind the instituions, the child creates a game. Suddenly, the game becomes the child's only reality. Despite Hoeg's lengthy digression into the history of the nature of time, which may leave the reader wondering how a story about a child's secret world turned into a discourse on philosophy, Hoeg succeeds in creating a story that both envelops the reader's imagination while forcing the reader to question his/her most basic beliefs. He uses the child's eye to examine a modern world most have grown to accept. The main characters are, for the most part, believable. And the scenes are reminicent of fractured images we all share of childhood. For a child, there is school and family and the need to understand why bad things happen. Hoeg motions us toward appreciating the struggle for understanding, regardless of whether true and full understanding ever comes. With Borderliners, Hoeg has written a superb novel.
Rating: Summary: an untimely story... Review: Being the first of Hoeg's works I've read, Borderliners struck me as interesting in its writing style (a kind of dry, unemotional, first-person retelling of the past told in snippets that read like a scientist's lab notebook observations), but ultimately disappointed me. The attempt to mesh a rather bland narrative with the author's partially elaborated philosophical musings on the nature of time proved debilitating to both approaches. With such a serious tone and lofty rhetoric, a reader expects the story and the philosophical concepts to match these heights, but they never do. As the children discover the "plan" behind the school and even deeper insights into their relation to time, I was left feeling and saying, "so what?!" (a kind of bibliophile's equivalent to riding a roller coaster up a big hill expecting to fear or thrill at the other side only to find it just levels out at the top). The writing never quite finds a rhythm or balance, although an element of suspense manages to carry one quite easily through the book. Hoeg's portrayal of childhood and the social forces that shape us stand out admirably, but all in all, his unique approach falls short and ends up muting the overall impact of the book.
Rating: Summary: An excellent read with a brutal storyline. Review: Borderliners by Peter Hoeg reads easy and deserves a meassure of reflection. The story is disturbing with it's brutality but it is in no way a study of blood and gore but a clinical evaluation of meassures and counter meassures. The book blends reflection and narration by a person who grew up in institutions for disturbed children. Hoeg paints a very dangerous and hostile environment for these "damaged" children. I highly recommend this book.
Rating: Summary: An examination of power Review: Borderliners is a disturbing examination of the nature of power and the way it can be manipulated. The surreal school setting focusses the reader's attention on events that many students may have naturalised; the ringing of bells, the concept of out-of-bounds, punishment, discipline and psychological assessment of students. In disrupting traditional notions of time and of the benign nature of adult authority, Hoeg is able to direct the reader into the world that exists outside of artificial, socially imposed boundaries. It is scary and dark but always a valuable place to consider. Borderliners positions the reader with those who are outside society looking in; it is a shocking experience. The multiple readings that are possible add to the intellectual and emotional impact of this book.
Rating: Summary: Time and space Review: Borderliners should be read within a Foucaultian and Lacanian context. Far from being a traditional novel, it attempts to contextualise issues pertaining to the production of power and the delimitations of time and space. The protagonists ( a psuedo-nuclear family) are representative of the individuals who mastered the politics of resistance and broke the norms attached to their spatio-temporal dimension. The knowledge perpetuated by IQ testing, boarding schools, experimentation simply magify the manner in which fields of knowledge choose to regulate and control. Hoeg proves that both time and space are discourses and that humans exist within a myth they created.
Rating: Summary: Well written, but a bit of a downer Review: Borderliners, a national bestseller according to the cover (but never stating which nation) was a fairly compelling and intelligent novel. Roughly, it is the story of a teenager growing up in a Danish orphanage. Actually, it is more focused than that, with the actual story taking place over a span of months, but with frequent (too frequent sometimes) flashbacks to earlier times. Peter Hoeg walks a fine line here, and not always with the agility required of a tightrope walker. At times the descent into the overbearing conformity and casual cruelty of the system is clear and present, but sometimes the author meanders around, yanking us away from the atmosphere he has so skillfully built up. For its size, there isn???t a lot that actually ???happens??? that I wish to discuss without giving away plot elements. But I do want to say that the plot as described on the back cover doesn???t really hold up. What the editorial writer referred to as a ???secret experiment in social Darwinism??? is really nothing more that the practice of mainstreaming ???special needs??? students. I use quotes only because I don???t know the current correct term. And ???re-creating time and space??? is just another phrase for breaking rules and trying not to get caught. This is a simplified breakdown, but I didn???t think in the end it was quite as big a deal as I???d been led to believe. There are other problem areas. For one, a major character was presented sympathetically even though he attacks and breaks fingers whenever someone is rude to him. I suppose the sinister experimentation is that he was put in an environment he couldn???t handle, which is a valid point, but I found it hard to feel that sorry. Another more serious problem is the last section. There are three sections, roughly dividing the story, but the last one is two thirds taken up with Hoeg???s random philosophizing on the nature of time. Mostly this is just introspective musings, and added little of value that I could identify. I suppose it???s meant as further commentary on the strict time schedules the characters are forced to adhere to. I don???t know. But it didn???t add anything. Basically, this is a pretty good book. It???s something a bit different, at least from my normal reading, and I???d probably choose to read more of Hoeg???s work in the future sometime or other. But I hardly found it exceptional.
Rating: Summary: Haunts the mind Review: 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.
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