Extrem faszinierendes Buch über die Zustände an dänischen Kinderheimen und Schulen Ende Sechziger-/Anfang der Siebzigerjahre, hochemotionale Erinnerungen des Autors, durchmischt mit philosophischen Spekulationen über die Zeit und welche Rolle sie in der Welt von Peter Høeg spielte. Letztlich vielleicht ein Erklärungsversuch, ein Versuch der Einordnung und Rationalisierung von Erlebnissen in der Kindheit und Jugend des Autors.
Ungeheuer dicht und packend erzählt, mit Distanz und Nähe zugleich, fesselnd, faszinierend. Das Buch macht auch sehr nachdenklich, über den eigentlich gut gemeinten Plan, der aus Sicht der betroffenen Kinder so sehr nach hinten losging.
Die Philosophie über die Zeit ist stellenweise sehr faszinierend und gut nachvollziehbar. Andernorts, speziell im dritten Teil, nimmt sie zu viel Raum ein und muss zu sehr als Erklärung für alles herhalten, als dass ich sie noch als wirklich schlüssig empfunden hätte. Die grundsätzliche Erkenntnis aber, dass Zeit nicht so eindeutig und gleichförmig ist, wie viele Menschen denken, kann ich nur aus vollstem Herzen bestätigen.
Insgesamt ein anstrengendes, aber geniales Buch. Sehr empfehlenswert! ( )

This is a book about a young juvenile delinquent who gets accepted into a fancy private boarding school. At first, its a godsend, but things keep getting weirder. Strange happenings, weird schedules, and even stranger people keep showing up. The book kept me interested, but I'm not sure I liked the ending.

Once the mystery was revealed, it was a bit of a let down - it didn't make sense. As for the leading character, I'm still not sure what the first person narrative, after the events of the school, is all about.

I'm assuming this is a bit of lost in translation, as well a product of the times.

Overall, its well written, but the plot was over the top with a mystery that was inconsistent once revealed. ( )

Høeg’s 1992 novel Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow was an international sensation, and rightly so, and was made into a film directed by Bille August and starring Julia Ormond and Gabriel Byrne. Borderliners was Høeg’s next novel (he had published two before Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow), and it’s a very different novel. Peter, the narrator, and Katerina and August are all pupils at a private school in the 1970s. All three are orphans – Peter has spent most of his life in children’s homes, Katerina’s parents died shortly before she was sent to the school, and August is on licence after killing his abusive parents. Shortly after his arrival at the school, Peter realises that everything in it is governed by schedule – he thinks of it as governed by time – and he theorises that this generates a particular way of seeing the world, which is what leads to the school’s success (it boasts a prime minister among its alumni). Although the three are not supposed to mingle, and make a secret of their friendship, they pass notes back and forth, meet in odd corners, and generally try to upset the school’s effect on themselves. August proves a handful, as he erupts into violence when threatened. Readers going into Borderliners expecting something like Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow will be disappointed – even Wikipedia states that Høeg’s novels tend to defy easy categorisation. Fortunately, I already knew this going in, although it’s certainly true Borderliners doesn’t have the immediate appeal of the earlier novel. Nonetheless, Høeg is an author whose work is worth exploring, I think. ( )

I thought I'd give Peter Høeg another go despite the weird debacle that was the second half of Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow as I picked this up cheaply from a local charity shop. Not the best idea I've ever had. I hope, in a way, that it is largely because of a poor, possibly overly-literal translation that Borderliners is such an unpleasant, bewildering mess. The English text is awkward in the extreme: abrupt sentence fragments abound and a weird alternation of "me", "you" and "one" to refer to the first person narrator does nothing to alleviate the overall confusion. Maybe that was intentional; maybe the character is supposed to come over as intensely fragmented, but I just found it irritating.

What was ultimately galling were the brief flashes of brilliance that hinted at how good this could have been, although even here the chopped up sentences are aggravating:

There could be a veil of mist in the mornings at the children's home, a white smoke ascending from the earth. At the point where it met the sunlight from heaven, dewdrops hung in the spider's web - big with curved, reversed reflections of the white strands and the misty grass and your own face. As though small globular universes were being born where the water from the earth met the fire from heaven. And somewhere in the silent beauty of these curved, looking-glass worlds you recognised yourself because of the crew cut. ( )

Peter Høeg on tanskalainen koulukotilapsi, josta kehittyi yksi Skandinavian nykykirjallisuuden menestyneimmistä nimistä. Rajatapaukset on hänen vuonna 1993 julkaistu toinen romaaninsa. Teos käsittelee koulukotilasten kokemuksia tiukasti aikataulutetussa laitosympäristössä. Teos kuvaa sitä, miten tarkoin normitetun järjestelmän pyörteissä muserretaan monia lahjakkaita lapsia silkasta ymmärtämättömyydestä. Teos käsittelee aikaa ja ajan kulua ylipäätään, ja kyseenalaistaa rivien väleissä, miksi siihen suhtaudutaan näin kuten täällä? ( )