Borderliners

Rating:
Summary: DIRECT ATTACK ON PUBLIC EDUCATION and SPECIAL EDUCATION
Review: It is central to the thinking in Public Education that the socialization to being in class exactly on time is more important than what goes on in class. This is evidenced to further delays by being sent to the office for tardiness and missing even more class time. Heaven forbid learning. Time consciousness is the meat and potatoes of a long abandoned real curricula out the window of public schools favoring nonsense, chaos, and shooting in the halls. The protagonists are in a school for those who have crossed the line of violence. Instead of humanizing more; less humanizing is the rule. Time become tyranny and marches over individuality so suppressed that it became violent to be met by the irony of even more suppression and repression versus love and emphasis on the humanities and learning per-se. This is the opposite of Private School and University Education. Special Education all over earth is based upon this behavioral rigidity and nonsense that foments the shooting, mockery and frightful disorders we see in American Education where linear time and alleged socialization is overemphasized. It is not only Special Education, but all education that makes this concrete emphasis. All scientific evidence points and indicates the opposite in fact; as Hoeg shows in fiction. Professor Frank Sulloway at MIT has written the evidence to back Hoeg's fictional theses. "Born to Rebel: Birth order, Family Values and Creative Lives," by Professor Sulloway demonstrates that socialization cannot be achieved in schools thusly and decidedly not so overemphasized that a nominally late student misses more learning because time is more important than facts. Imagine this applied to society universally. Even the military cuts more slack than this; and makes more sense. Hoeg in fiction and Sulloway in science go hand-in-hand with the Great Chain of Being in the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities to humanize curricula, schools, life, and society. There lies the great truth and value in all of Hoeg's works. Thinking and application to life shows that this is no more a "bizarre experiment" than the BBC RULES of 1948 which became the world of Eric Blair metamorphosed into "1984" by Blair a.k.a. George Orwell. Hoeg is no the less profound and exacting in his fiction than Blair-Orwell or Orwell the great essayist. Both genres and ideas fit under Hoeg's hat amicably in BORDERLINERS. Do have another read of BORDERLINERS if you had not considered it in such clear light. HART Colorado August 2000 [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Ambitious, Flawed, and Very Worthwhile
Review: It's difficult for me to think of this book separately from Hoeg's first, _A History of Danish Dreams_, which reads like a fever-dream-version of _Borderliners_. Both are obsessed with the passage (or seeming failure to pass) of time, and with certain elements of pagan and Lutheran symbolism. Both are populated by characters surviving in the midst of nearly Kafkaesque madness by distancing themselves from the world and the people in it. The two books feed one another: I think that, if it's feasible, you should read the older book first.

_Borderliners_ is more polished than either _Smilla..._ or _...History..._, but it grows rough toward the end, as Hoeg draws closer to the real subject of the story. Even as the prose grows awkward, though, and even as the narrative becomes more detached as it approaches the present, those facts somehow make it even more effective.

This is not an easy book to read, emotionally, nor is it a simple book to understand. It can be construed as an indictment of "special education" or progressivism, but it should not be: It's simply the story that it is, and shouldn't be approached with any preconceptions.

Rating:
Summary: BRILLIANT!
Review: It's fantastic how he manage to write between the lines without a frustrating effect by doing so.

This book is a must read for everyone!

Rating:
Summary: A bit disappointing
Review: Maybe the thrill of Smilla is still left in my brain, so I read borderliner with great expectation. You could say expectation is half met. I do not know if the story is about the author himself, because apperantly Peter Hoeg is the "Peter" in the book. I feel readlly upset when I cannot be sure of this. ('cos I have problem with accepting it is a personal account of some past event of one of my favourite writer)

Anyway, I think the book is a little bit uncoherent. As someone pointed out before, some passage and chapter seems to be unnecessary and even, in my view, destroy the completeness of the story.

Of course, I like the way he tells the story. Suspense, with room for thought. But the whole structure of the story is not very will built. I especially found the last part of his discussion of concept of time "hollow"

Rating:
Summary: on the border beween timeless and interminable
Review: Peter Hoeg attempts to convey his perceptions of time thru structure by contrasting the infinite feeling of love with the mechanistic orderliness of a Danish school. His efforts to discuss social Darwinism via a diabolical plot to mainstream the troubled youth with the unfeeling majority stay in literary shallow waters. Hoeg finally must recogize his failures, because the book ends with a self-explanation, which, frankly, is more interesting than the novel itself

Rating:
Summary: DIRECT ATTACK ON PUBLIC EDUCATION and SPECIAL EDUCATION
Review: Peter Hoeg: BORDERLINERS

Peter Hoeg's Borderliners is really about time; and the use of one concept of time in a linear sense as the organizational mechanism of Public Education. Hoeg deals in subtle ironies because those in Special Education get less of what they need most and more of what made them as they are. It is central to the thinking in Public Education that the socialization to being in class exactly on time is more important than what goes on in class. This is evidenced to further delays by being sent to the office for tardiness and missing even more class time. Heaven forbid learning. Time consciousness is the meat and potatoes of a long abandoned real curricula out the window of public schools favoring nonsense, chaos, and shooting in the halls. The protagonists are in a school for those who have crossed the line of violence. Instead of humanizing more; less humanizing is the rule. Time becomes tyranny and marches over individuality so suppressed that it became violent to be met by the irony of even more suppression and repression versus love and emphasis on the humanities and learning per-se. This is the opposite of Private School and University Education. Special Education all over earth is based upon this behavioral rigidity and nonsense that foments the shooting, mockery and frightful disorders we see in American Education where linear time and alleged socialization is overemphasized. It is not only Special Education, but all education that makes this concrete emphasis. All scientific evidence points and indicates the opposite in fact; as Hoeg shows in fiction. Professor Frank Sulloway at MIT has written the evidence to back Hoeg's fictional theses. "Born to Rebel: Birth order, Family Values and Creative Lives," by Professor Sulloway demonstrates that socialization cannot be achieved in schools thusly and decidedly not so overemphasized that a nominally late student misses more learning because time is more important than facts. Imagine this applied to society universally. Even the military cuts more slack than this; and makes more sense. Hoeg in fiction and Sulloway in science go hand-in-hand with the Great Chain of Being in the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities to humanize curricula, schools, life, and society. There lies the great truth and value in all of Hoeg's works. Thinking and application to life shows that this is no more a "bizarre experiment" than the BBC RULES of 1948 which became the world of Eric Blair metamorphosed into "1984" by Blair a.k.a. George Orwell. Hoeg is no the less profound and exacting in his fiction than Blair-Orwell or Orwell the great essayist. Both genres and ideas fit under Hoeg's hat amicably in BORDERLINERS. Do have another read of BORDERLINERS if you had not considered it in such clear light. HART Colorado August 2000 [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: An excellent follow-up to Smilla!
Review: The writing of the great Danish novelist Peter Høeg is beyond genre classification, although this novel and Smilla's Sense Of Snow could best be described as a cross between an Ingmar Bergman screenplay and a Stephen King novel. Borderliners is a dark, semiautobiographical novel about Peter, a 13-year-old boy attending a boarding school for troubled students in Copenhagen. In a dreary atmosphere of hopelessness, strictly enforced regulations and corporal punishments, Peter befriends two very opposite fellow students: the older, sophisticated loner Katarina and a timid little boy named August. Something strange is going on, but Peter can't figure it out. Why would a school that prides itself on order accept a student like August - a schizophrenic who murdered his parents after suffering years of their abuse? "He is chaos." Katarina says. Peter soon uncovers a terrifying, Orwellian experiment in behavior modification being run by school administrators. And we Americans thought our schools were bad for stoning our kids out on drugs like Ritalin! Peter Høeg's book is a must-read for anyone who likes great literature. His prose is dark and lushly poetic. You will never forget Borderliners!

Rating:
Summary: An excellent follow-up to Smilla!
Review: The writing of the great Danish novelist Peter Høeg is beyond genre classification, although this novel and Smilla's Sense Of Snow could best be described as a cross between an Ingmar Bergman screenplay and a Stephen King novel. Borderliners is a dark, semiautobiographical novel about Peter, a 13-year-old boy attending a boarding school for troubled students in Copenhagen. In a dreary atmosphere of hopelessness, strictly enforced regulations and corporal punishments, Peter befriends two very opposite fellow students: the older, sophisticated loner Katarina and a timid little boy named August. Something strange is going on, but Peter can't figure it out. Why would a school that prides itself on order accept a student like August - a schizophrenic who murdered his parents after suffering years of their abuse? "He is chaos." Katarina says. Peter soon uncovers a terrifying, Orwellian experiment in behavior modification being run by school administrators. And we Americans thought our schools were bad for stoning our kids out on drugs like Ritalin! Peter Høeg's book is a must-read for anyone who likes great literature. His prose is dark and lushly poetic. You will never forget Borderliners!

Rating:
Summary: AN OVERRATED BOOK OF AN OVERRATED WRITER
Review: There is very little substanse behind the fine word and form in "Borderline". The first two thirds of the book are an interesting story with a plot which owes the major part of the inspiration to Ken Kersey, Foucault, Blixen, Brooks etc. The last third of the book is a show-off in time-theory (Look!! See what i can do) Wouldn't it be possible to integrate this discussion into the plot? The Book brings us nothing new. Foucault is best readen in original form, no one writes better Blixen-like stories than Blixen herself, and the theory of Brooks, Iser, Todorov and others find their way into the the world of Literature. Theorist makes theory to cope whith literature, not to create literature. That is better done by writers!! I find Peter Høeg very technical, very "constructed" (all though i am aware that all books are constructed, but this construction is working against all forms of aestetics), not very subtle and so political correct that it hurts. (Why don't we all move to Africa and live in harmony with mother nature). The metaphore with the spider in the middle of the world made me sick!!! I will grant three stars to the book (Which by the way is his one of his "best", only succeeded by "Tales of the night"), all given for good technical performance. Had he been able to write more subtle I might have given four.

Rating:
Summary: One of my favorite books
Review: This book changed the way I felt about time and the world I live in. I can't express how deeply this book has affected me but I know I will read it again and again for the rest of my life.