Høeg Peter. Borderliners

HTMLSecond Peter Hoeg book to be reissued in Harvill Panther."Borderliners" is the story of three children who are suffering the regime of an experimental school where time is used as an instrument of oppression to be resisted and rebelled against."What is most moving is their acceptance of how appallingly most adults will behave towards them" - The GuardianHoeg believes that he has always had problems with time, and that children only learn to mark time at school. For the children of "Borderliners", time is almost a religion.After the astounding critical and popular success of his first book (Smilla's Sense of Snow, 1993), it wouldn't be entirely unexpected if Hoeg produced a less-successful sequel. But his second novel-a complete departure from Smilla-is even more brilliantly stunning than his first. Borderliners focuses on a 14-year-old orphan named, oddly, Peter Hoeg. Hoeg has been incarcerated in custodial institutions all of his young life, and he matter-of-factly recounts the cruelties of daily life that he has come to accept as normal. His latest "home" is Biehl's School, where most students are academically gifted and from good backgrounds. Peter can't understand why he has been allowed to join these exalted ranks, but he soon finds that other of society's "borderliners" have also been brought to the school. Among these misfits, he is attracted to the older, wiser Katarina and to August, a tiny murderer who killed his parents after years of suffering unimaginable abuse. The three begin to believe there is a grand scheme behind their placement at the school, that the staff may be conducting a strange and misguided experiment that could end in disaster. Hoeg's story reveals a harsh and grotesque world in which most of us could never survive. But it also suggests that there is hope-in the form of peace, if not happiness-for those like Peter who have been the victims of life. Disturbing, brilliant, and searing.In this extraordinary novel, Hoeg portrays the closed world of Biehl's, a Danish private school where a bizarre social experiment is underway. The narrator, Peter, is now a student at Biehl's after spending all of his life in children's homes and reform schools. He is a borderline case, along with Katarina, whose parents both died in the past year, and August, severely disturbed after killing his abusive parents. Although allowed no social interaction, the children conspire to conduct their own experiment to discover what plan is being carried out at Biehl's. Hoeg touches on some of the same themes as in his acclaimed Smilla's Sense of Snow (LJ 8/93)-neglected children, scientific experiments, and technology-but this is not a thriller and may not appeal to the same audience. It is instead a fascinating intellectual puzzle that explores the themes of social control, child assessment, family, and the concept of time. Highly recommended.