Borderliners, by Peter Hoeg: **7/8

Seems like this might have been an autobiography of Msr. Hoeg. If not, it sure read like it. In any case, it's a wacky story of a couple of kids in a bizarre school in Denmark that seems to be trying some sort of child-psychology experiment on "screw-up" kids, including Hoeg. Good drama, several good characters, frightening bad guys - lots of fun and very exciting.

As with Smilla's Sense of Snow, Hoeg picks a concept as a sort of metaphor or plot device that he then uses and mentions throughout the book to lend it depth and scope. In Smilla's that concept was snow, and he took a relatively straightforward thriller and made it fascinating by having snow as the explanation, motivation, and destination of the story. It completely worked for me, and as I explained in my review of that book, the snow is the story. In this case, the concept is time, how it moves, is perceived, etc. Maybe the fact that I think about time a lot (being a composer) has led to higher standards for me in that regard. (Certainly, a Miami native like me, though I've now 8 winters under my belt, is no expert on snow. But I've read a book called The Time of Music.) Maybe Hoeg just understands snow better than he understand time. I'm not sure. What I am sure about is that his comments on the notion of temporal perception alternated between insightful and questionable. If all of this stuff would have worked for me, I would have loved the book. I think the underlying plot is actually better than the one in Smilla's. But Hoeg's sometimes wandering ideas about time only confused the plot, thereby easing the tension. There were lots of good quotes in this one, which I unfortunately did not write down because I didn't have my pad with me in the fall of 2001.
(fall 2001)

Close this window