What do you think?
Rate this book
BORDERLINE
Three people, strangers to one another, arrive at a border crossing. Felicity, an American gallery owner, Gus, a Canadian salesman, and a refugee from El Salvador. Their lives become dangerously and inextricably linked.
- GenresFiction
304 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1985
4 people are currently reading
68 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
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