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Borderline
By chance, Felicity, a Boston art gallery director, and Gus, a Canadian insurance salesman, witness the arrest of Salvadorean refugees trying to enter Canada, and decide to help an alien missed by the custom inspectors
- GenresFiction
287 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1985
4 people are currently reading
68 people want to read
About the author
Janette Turner Hospital
30 books79 followersBorn in 1942, Janette Turner Hospital grew up on the steamy sub-tropical coast of Australia in the north-eastern state of Queensland. She began her teaching career in remote Queensland high schools, but since her graduate studies she has taught in universities in Australia, Canada, England, France and the United States.
Her first published short story appeared in the Atlantic Monthly (USA) where it won an 'Atlantic First' citation in 1978. Her first novel, The Ivory Swing (set in the village in South India where she lived in l977) won Canada's $50,000 Seal Award in l982. She lived for many years in Canada and in 1986 she was listed as by the Toronto Globe & Mail as one of Canada's 'Ten Best Young Fiction Writers'. Since then she has won a number of prizes for her eight novels and four short story collections and her work has been published in multiple foreign language collections. Three of her short stories appeared in Britain's annual Best Short Stories in English in their year of publication and one of these, 'Unperformed Experiments Have No Results', was selected for The Best of the Best, an anthology of the decade in l995.
The Last Magician, her fifth novel, was listed by Publishers' Weekly as one of the 12 best novels published in 1992 in the USA and was a New York Times 'Notable Book of the Year'. Oyster, her sixth novel, was a finalist for Australia's Miles Franklin Prize Award and for Canada's Trillium Award, and in England it was listed in 'Best Books of the Year' by The Observer, which noted "Oyster is a tour de force… Turner Hospital is one of the best female novelists writing in English." In the USA, Oyster was a New York Times 'Notable Book of the Year'.
Due Preparations for the Plague won the Queensland Premier's Literary Award in 2003, the Davitt Award from Sisters in Crime for "best crime novel of the year by an Australian woman”, and was shortlisted for the Christina Stead Award. In 2003, Hospital received the Patrick White Award, as well as a Doctor of Letters honoris causa from the University of Queensland.
Orpheus Lost, her most recent novel, was one of five finalists for the $110,000 Australia-Asia Literary prize in 2008.
Orpheus Lost was also on Booklist's Top 30 novels of the year in 2008, along with novels by Booker Prize winner Anne Enright, National Book Award winner Denis Johnson, Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, Michael Ondaatje, Ian MacEwan, Ha Jin, and Michael Chabon.
The novel also made the list of Best 25 Books of the Year of Library Journal, and Hospital was invited to be a keynote speaker at the annual convention of the American Library Association in Los Angeles in June 2008.
The Italian edition, Orfeo Perduto, has been so well-received in Italy that it will be a featured title at the literary festival on Lake Maggiore in June 2010 where Hospital will be a featured author.
She holds an endowed chair as Carolina Distinguished Professor of English at the University of South Carolina and in 2003 received the Russell Research Award for Humanities and Social Sciences, conferred by the university for the most significant faculty contribution (research, publication, teaching and service) in a given year.
Her first published short story appeared in the Atlantic Monthly (USA) where it won an 'Atlantic First' citation in 1978. Her first novel, The Ivory Swing (set in the village in South India where she lived in l977) won Canada's $50,000 Seal Award in l982. She lived for many years in Canada and in 1986 she was listed as by the Toronto Globe & Mail as one of Canada's 'Ten Best Young Fiction Writers'. Since then she has won a number of prizes for her eight novels and four short story collections and her work has been published in multiple foreign language collections. Three of her short stories appeared in Britain's annual Best Short Stories in English in their year of publication and one of these, 'Unperformed Experiments Have No Results', was selected for The Best of the Best, an anthology of the decade in l995.
The Last Magician, her fifth novel, was listed by Publishers' Weekly as one of the 12 best novels published in 1992 in the USA and was a New York Times 'Notable Book of the Year'. Oyster, her sixth novel, was a finalist for Australia's Miles Franklin Prize Award and for Canada's Trillium Award, and in England it was listed in 'Best Books of the Year' by The Observer, which noted "Oyster is a tour de force… Turner Hospital is one of the best female novelists writing in English." In the USA, Oyster was a New York Times 'Notable Book of the Year'.
Due Preparations for the Plague won the Queensland Premier's Literary Award in 2003, the Davitt Award from Sisters in Crime for "best crime novel of the year by an Australian woman”, and was shortlisted for the Christina Stead Award. In 2003, Hospital received the Patrick White Award, as well as a Doctor of Letters honoris causa from the University of Queensland.
Orpheus Lost, her most recent novel, was one of five finalists for the $110,000 Australia-Asia Literary prize in 2008.
Orpheus Lost was also on Booklist's Top 30 novels of the year in 2008, along with novels by Booker Prize winner Anne Enright, National Book Award winner Denis Johnson, Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, Michael Ondaatje, Ian MacEwan, Ha Jin, and Michael Chabon.
The novel also made the list of Best 25 Books of the Year of Library Journal, and Hospital was invited to be a keynote speaker at the annual convention of the American Library Association in Los Angeles in June 2008.
The Italian edition, Orfeo Perduto, has been so well-received in Italy that it will be a featured title at the literary festival on Lake Maggiore in June 2010 where Hospital will be a featured author.
She holds an endowed chair as Carolina Distinguished Professor of English at the University of South Carolina and in 2003 received the Russell Research Award for Humanities and Social Sciences, conferred by the university for the most significant faculty contribution (research, publication, teaching and service) in a given year.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 23, 2015
The inside blurb informs me that this novel, the author's third, was runner up for the Australian National Book Award in 1985. That, and the great cover of this Virago Modern Classics edition incited me to rescue it from the bottom shelf in a thrift shop and take it home to give it a read, reviews unseen. For the equivalent of 75 cents, I risked only my time, and might even get lucky and discover a great author unknown to me. It's happened before, so yes, I hunt those bottom shelves and make those quick judgments based on the cover.
Well, I didn't get lucky. I read this with a combination of appreciation, irritation, and yes, at times, the dreaded boredom.
First, the appreciation. J. Turner Hospital has a few tricks up her sleeve, and is a more than capable writer. She has, in Borderline, set about writing an ambitious novel and taken a number of risks for which she deserves some credit.
Now, the irritation (sigh). These same writerly risks, cool that they may be, just don't work here, at least not all together. There is an unreliable narrator (who lets us know as much, from the beginning), a loosely postmodern construction, a smidgen of magic realism, some social commentary (of the circa 1980's Sandinista variety), the borderline theme pressed to the core (between dreams/reality, memory/reality, art and fiction/reality, etc. etc.), references to religion, to Dante, to art, to the theatre; and what have you. To top it all off, there is a very silly attempt to inject elements of a mystery thriller that sours almost all of the other directions taken in this novel. It's as if the cook, unsure of what else to add, throws the whole spice rack in, hoping for a fortuitous outcome.
Finally, the boredom. Yes, there are characters writhing around in here, but most never make it out of the pot. From the philandering, guilt-ridden Canadian salesman (Augustine) who by accident encounters the atmospheric noble heroine on a pedestal (Felicity) to the stereotyped artist-with-big-appetites older lover (Seymour, the Old Volcano) to his wordy and withdrawn son Jean-Mark (the unreliable narrator, seriously smitten and given to unchecked fantasy about his let's call her sometime step-mother Felicity) to La Magdalena, La Desconocida, or just plain Dolorez Marquez, who is at the heart of the story but who never out-steps her ethereal role, as well as a number of other characters - all flavor elements who play a part in the narrative without otherwise existing; at least not to the point where a reader might actually get interested in them.
Final thoughts: A novel that doesn't hold up to its ambition, Borderline is more or less disappointing. Perhaps the author has written more convincing works since so if I happen across another of her novels on used book trawls , I might give it a shot. Until then, I won't be actively seeking them.
Well, I didn't get lucky. I read this with a combination of appreciation, irritation, and yes, at times, the dreaded boredom.
First, the appreciation. J. Turner Hospital has a few tricks up her sleeve, and is a more than capable writer. She has, in Borderline, set about writing an ambitious novel and taken a number of risks for which she deserves some credit.
Now, the irritation (sigh). These same writerly risks, cool that they may be, just don't work here, at least not all together. There is an unreliable narrator (who lets us know as much, from the beginning), a loosely postmodern construction, a smidgen of magic realism, some social commentary (of the circa 1980's Sandinista variety), the borderline theme pressed to the core (between dreams/reality, memory/reality, art and fiction/reality, etc. etc.), references to religion, to Dante, to art, to the theatre; and what have you. To top it all off, there is a very silly attempt to inject elements of a mystery thriller that sours almost all of the other directions taken in this novel. It's as if the cook, unsure of what else to add, throws the whole spice rack in, hoping for a fortuitous outcome.
Finally, the boredom. Yes, there are characters writhing around in here, but most never make it out of the pot. From the philandering, guilt-ridden Canadian salesman (Augustine) who by accident encounters the atmospheric noble heroine on a pedestal (Felicity) to the stereotyped artist-with-big-appetites older lover (Seymour, the Old Volcano) to his wordy and withdrawn son Jean-Mark (the unreliable narrator, seriously smitten and given to unchecked fantasy about his let's call her sometime step-mother Felicity) to La Magdalena, La Desconocida, or just plain Dolorez Marquez, who is at the heart of the story but who never out-steps her ethereal role, as well as a number of other characters - all flavor elements who play a part in the narrative without otherwise existing; at least not to the point where a reader might actually get interested in them.
Final thoughts: A novel that doesn't hold up to its ambition, Borderline is more or less disappointing. Perhaps the author has written more convincing works since so if I happen across another of her novels on used book trawls , I might give it a shot. Until then, I won't be actively seeking them.
March 14, 2022
3.5/5
JTH again writes eloquently and beautifully, with a bold premise and a story told through a very interesting type of unreliable narrator.
However, I felt like this could have been a bit more cohesive and impressive if the vast amount of themes and analogy had been reduced a bit. What makes JTHs novel Oyster one of all time favourites is that the themes all work together to further the narrative, and flow with it. Borderline just had a bit too many moving parts too it, that made the novel clunky and at times confusing - which was frustrating when there are so many beautiful pieces of writing.
The use of art and the themes of sexuality (particularly power dynamics and how people utilise sex), and all of the parallels to things being 'borderline' were well intertwined with the narrative, and in particular I found the character of Felicity along with how she's seen by the narrator really enthralling.
JTH again writes eloquently and beautifully, with a bold premise and a story told through a very interesting type of unreliable narrator.
However, I felt like this could have been a bit more cohesive and impressive if the vast amount of themes and analogy had been reduced a bit. What makes JTHs novel Oyster one of all time favourites is that the themes all work together to further the narrative, and flow with it. Borderline just had a bit too many moving parts too it, that made the novel clunky and at times confusing - which was frustrating when there are so many beautiful pieces of writing.
The use of art and the themes of sexuality (particularly power dynamics and how people utilise sex), and all of the parallels to things being 'borderline' were well intertwined with the narrative, and in particular I found the character of Felicity along with how she's seen by the narrator really enthralling.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews