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Border Crossing
Border Crossing
is Pat Barker's unflinching novel of darkness, evil and society.
When Tom Seymour, a child psychologist, plunges into a river to save a young man from drowning, he unwittingly reopens a chapter from his past he'd hoped to forget. For Tom already knows Danny Miller. When Danny was ten Tom helped imprison him for the killing of an old woman. Now out of prison with a new identity, Danny has some questions - questions he thinks only Tom can answer.
Reluctantly, Tom is drawn back into Danny's world - a place where the border between good and evil, innocence and guilt is blurred and confused. But when Danny's demands on Tom become extreme, Tom wonders whether he has crossed a line of his own - and in crossing it, can he ever go back?
When Tom Seymour, a child psychologist, plunges into a river to save a young man from drowning, he unwittingly reopens a chapter from his past he'd hoped to forget. For Tom already knows Danny Miller. When Danny was ten Tom helped imprison him for the killing of an old woman. Now out of prison with a new identity, Danny has some questions - questions he thinks only Tom can answer.
Reluctantly, Tom is drawn back into Danny's world - a place where the border between good and evil, innocence and guilt is blurred and confused. But when Danny's demands on Tom become extreme, Tom wonders whether he has crossed a line of his own - and in crossing it, can he ever go back?
281 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
65 people are currently reading
1016 people want to read
About the author
Pat Barker
26 books2,631 followersPat Barker is an English writer known for her fiction exploring themes of memory, trauma, and survival. She gained prominence with Union Street (1982), a stark portrayal of working-class women's lives, and later achieved critical acclaim with the Regeneration Trilogy (1991–1995), a series blending history and fiction to examine the psychological impact of World War I. The final book, The Ghost Road (1995), won the Booker Prize. In recent years, she has turned to retelling classical myths from a female perspective, beginning with The Silence of the Girls (2018). Barker's work is widely recognized for its direct and unflinching storytelling.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 198 reviews
September 26, 2014
I read this because I loved Barker’s harrowing, gorgeously written, revelatory Regeneration trilogy, about shell-shocked soldiers in WWI. Having read Border Crossing… I highly recommend Regeneration.
Tom Seymour, a psychologist, is walking along the river with his soon-to-be-ex-wife when a young man leaps into the river. Tom jumps in and saves his life. And then discovers that the young man, Danny, was once a ten-year-old boy who had gone to prison for murder after Tom had examined him and testified that he was capable of understanding the consequences of his actions. Now both Danny and Tom undertake a quest to understand what really happened on the night of the murder.
Border Crossing, unfortunately, had a lot of elements that many genre readers dislike in mainstream fiction— the middle-aged white man with a failing marriage, the under-characterized wife who wants a baby, the anti-climactic and inconclusive ending in which the point appears to be that real life has no point, a general air of gloom— but without much to compensate. (Regeneration has none of those elements, with the possible exception of gloom. I would argue, however, that it is tragic rather than merely glum.)
The characters are under-characterized. We don’t learn much about Tom other than that he’s a sad sack with a failing marriage (and dubious professional ethics, but those seem to be there to make the plot work.) The wife just wants a baby. The social worker is dedicated. Danny appears to be a creepy, sociopathic, possibly psychotic manipulator who murdered because he was fucked up by an abusive childhood… but is that really all there is to it?
Given the tone of the rest of the book, I started expecting to never find out whether or not Danny is actually a murderer. So I was pleased to find that we do get an answer to that. However, it’s not an interesting answer.
I was left with an overwhelming sense of underwhelm.
Tom Seymour, a psychologist, is walking along the river with his soon-to-be-ex-wife when a young man leaps into the river. Tom jumps in and saves his life. And then discovers that the young man, Danny, was once a ten-year-old boy who had gone to prison for murder after Tom had examined him and testified that he was capable of understanding the consequences of his actions. Now both Danny and Tom undertake a quest to understand what really happened on the night of the murder.
Border Crossing, unfortunately, had a lot of elements that many genre readers dislike in mainstream fiction— the middle-aged white man with a failing marriage, the under-characterized wife who wants a baby, the anti-climactic and inconclusive ending in which the point appears to be that real life has no point, a general air of gloom— but without much to compensate. (Regeneration has none of those elements, with the possible exception of gloom. I would argue, however, that it is tragic rather than merely glum.)
The characters are under-characterized. We don’t learn much about Tom other than that he’s a sad sack with a failing marriage (and dubious professional ethics, but those seem to be there to make the plot work.) The wife just wants a baby. The social worker is dedicated. Danny appears to be a creepy, sociopathic, possibly psychotic manipulator who murdered because he was fucked up by an abusive childhood… but is that really all there is to it?
Given the tone of the rest of the book, I started expecting to never find out whether or not Danny is actually a murderer. So I was pleased to find that we do get an answer to that. However, it’s not an interesting answer.
I was left with an overwhelming sense of underwhelm.
January 28, 2021
BORDER CROSSING (2001) explores the problem of evil, a subject that Pat Barker had explored in her previous novel, ANOTHER WORLD. There are murderous children in ANOTHER WORLD and in this novel we have Danny Miller, a ten-year old neglected boy who murdered Lizzie Parkes, a 76 year old woman, when she surprised him in her home. Forensic evidence showed that Danny kicked the old lady downstairs, suffocated her with a pillow and then "played with her" after she was dead.
A psychologist, Tom Seymour, acted as an expert witness at his trial. Danny was judged guilty and received a life sentence, first at a correctional school and later in prison. His model behavior led to supervised parole and a chance to start life with a new identity.
It is Danny's relationship with the psychologist after he is released that dominates this novel. Confronted by Danny 13 years after the trial, Tom is faced with a manipulative, complex personality. Tom feels guilty because of his role as an expert witness at the boy's trial and he now seems to feel the need to shield the young man from further unpleasantness. Very soon it becomes clear that Tom has invested in his client much more than the reader deems wise.
The big question this novel asks is: can people really change? I find this subject utterly fascinating, and Parker's accomplished exploration of evil is, indeed, gripping as a thriller, however I felt that the ending of this novel was simply too neat. Danny is a sinister and dangerous character and his disquieting "redemption" at the end of the novel is a solution that seems to ignore the social and psychological complexities of ill-doing. With BORDER CROSSING Barker returns to a fictional territory which she had explored more successfully in her REGENERATION trilogy, that of the patient-therapist relationship, but I feel she has become repetitive now.
A psychologist, Tom Seymour, acted as an expert witness at his trial. Danny was judged guilty and received a life sentence, first at a correctional school and later in prison. His model behavior led to supervised parole and a chance to start life with a new identity.
It is Danny's relationship with the psychologist after he is released that dominates this novel. Confronted by Danny 13 years after the trial, Tom is faced with a manipulative, complex personality. Tom feels guilty because of his role as an expert witness at the boy's trial and he now seems to feel the need to shield the young man from further unpleasantness. Very soon it becomes clear that Tom has invested in his client much more than the reader deems wise.
The big question this novel asks is: can people really change? I find this subject utterly fascinating, and Parker's accomplished exploration of evil is, indeed, gripping as a thriller, however I felt that the ending of this novel was simply too neat. Danny is a sinister and dangerous character and his disquieting "redemption" at the end of the novel is a solution that seems to ignore the social and psychological complexities of ill-doing. With BORDER CROSSING Barker returns to a fictional territory which she had explored more successfully in her REGENERATION trilogy, that of the patient-therapist relationship, but I feel she has become repetitive now.
August 19, 2018
3.5 stars. Tom, a child psychologist saves a young man from drowning, and discovers that he is Danny, who he helped convict when Danny was accused and found guilty of murdering an old woman when Danny was a child. Now Danny wants to find out what happened on that day, and asks Tom to help him. I had no problem with getting to the end, and I was interested in the story, but I felt the novel had many flaws: Danny's voice was too sophisticated for his background of a poor childhood and prison; I wasn't sure why Danny wanted to speak to Tom in the first place to 'remember' - when it's not as if the memory has to be coaxed from him, and when he says he doesn't want to see a 'shrink'; why Tom feels he has to visit people who knew Danny in the past to help him in the present; and the length of time he spends at these interviews (for example he travels a long way to interview Danny's old prison warden and then spends about three minutes with him before the prison warden says sorry, I've got to get on).
I think this novel could have been good with an editor who questioned Barker more on her writing decisions. As it was it felt as though after the success of her Regeneration trilogy she was somewhat indulged.
I think this novel could have been good with an editor who questioned Barker more on her writing decisions. As it was it felt as though after the success of her Regeneration trilogy she was somewhat indulged.
September 24, 2025
Only Pat Barker could have gotten me to fully read & finish what is in reality a contemporary lit fic crime thriller about a middle-aged man processing his divorce.
What I’m saying is, this was quite well written but I got to the end and thought, “as expected - totally pointless.”
Call it Pat Barker does Patricia Highsmith, I guess. Neither the MC nor the strangely appealing, probably murderous young man that crosses his path were sympathetic characters, and while the plot was compelling enough that I downed this in one sitting, I didn’t particularly enjoy it and wouldn’t recommend!
What this book does have in its favor is the commitment to realism which in my reading experience is a Pat Barker staple. I suppose it has more nuance and empathy than 90% of true crime/true crime-adjacent fiction out there. (That’s saying nothing because most true crime is exploitative retrogressive fundamentally conservative torture porn, but I digress.) But… look, at least SOME white cis heterosexual financially stable professionally-employed men in their 30s/40s/etc. MUST have more nuanced problems than mainstream contemporary fiction portrays. They must! This book does not depict that scenario however.
Oh well!
ETA to say I DO have to give this book credit for giving me the weirdest, longest dream, in which a female conservative podcast host turned out to be a sociopathic teen orphan space grifter who was trying to seduce her spaceship captain adoptive dad, and the aliens from guardians of the galaxy (who were working as mining contractors) destroyed the remnants of human art and knowledge in the end. So that’s fun? Fine?
What I’m saying is, this was quite well written but I got to the end and thought, “as expected - totally pointless.”
Call it Pat Barker does Patricia Highsmith, I guess. Neither the MC nor the strangely appealing, probably murderous young man that crosses his path were sympathetic characters, and while the plot was compelling enough that I downed this in one sitting, I didn’t particularly enjoy it and wouldn’t recommend!
What this book does have in its favor is the commitment to realism which in my reading experience is a Pat Barker staple. I suppose it has more nuance and empathy than 90% of true crime/true crime-adjacent fiction out there. (That’s saying nothing because most true crime is exploitative retrogressive fundamentally conservative torture porn, but I digress.) But… look, at least SOME white cis heterosexual financially stable professionally-employed men in their 30s/40s/etc. MUST have more nuanced problems than mainstream contemporary fiction portrays. They must! This book does not depict that scenario however.
Oh well!
ETA to say I DO have to give this book credit for giving me the weirdest, longest dream, in which a female conservative podcast host turned out to be a sociopathic teen orphan space grifter who was trying to seduce her spaceship captain adoptive dad, and the aliens from guardians of the galaxy (who were working as mining contractors) destroyed the remnants of human art and knowledge in the end. So that’s fun? Fine?
October 9, 2016
I had such high hopes for this book. Back in April when I was on a female authors kick, I asked several bookworm friends who they recommended, and several said Pat Barker. Upon reading reviews online, I discovered Barker has been around since the '80s and is pretty popular -- at least in England. I checked book summaries of several of her novels and decided on Border Crossing, her 2001 novel that reminded me a bit of The Sixth Sense. I'm a fan of psychological study and recounts of childhood in fiction, and this book promised both.
Sadly, I only got questionable -- at best -- psychology in spurts and almost no "hidden, dark secrets in childhood" elements that the synopsis promised. Needless to say I was very disappointed.
The protagonist is Tom Seymour, a psychologist who is going through a bad divorce. During a stroll through the park, Tom sees a man about to jump into a river to commit suicide and saves him. As it turns out, this man -- Danny Miller -- is a guy Tom witnessed against thirteen years prior in court in Miller's murder trial. As a ten year old, Danny killed an old woman and now he's out of jail. The two meet up and decide to hold sessions, with Tom trying to help Danny get over the darkness of his past.
.... and that's it. At only 215 pages, this book is scant and threadbare, providing only the littlest of details and not much else. I didn't feel for any of the characters; in fact, I pretty actively despised most of them. I didn't care about what they were going through -- Tom and his divorce, Danny going through the trauma of trudging up his past -- and found myself pushing through just so I wouldn't have a book on my shelf I hadn't finished. We only get to see Tom and Danny talk a couple of times, and those encounters are perfunctory and frustrating, with flat dialogue and boring revelations.
I'm going to give this one two stars, if only because the book didn't bore me. It annoyed me, but it didn't bore me. It was easy to plow through, and the premise was interesting enough even if the author didn't deliver.
Sadly, I only got questionable -- at best -- psychology in spurts and almost no "hidden, dark secrets in childhood" elements that the synopsis promised. Needless to say I was very disappointed.
The protagonist is Tom Seymour, a psychologist who is going through a bad divorce. During a stroll through the park, Tom sees a man about to jump into a river to commit suicide and saves him. As it turns out, this man -- Danny Miller -- is a guy Tom witnessed against thirteen years prior in court in Miller's murder trial. As a ten year old, Danny killed an old woman and now he's out of jail. The two meet up and decide to hold sessions, with Tom trying to help Danny get over the darkness of his past.
.... and that's it. At only 215 pages, this book is scant and threadbare, providing only the littlest of details and not much else. I didn't feel for any of the characters; in fact, I pretty actively despised most of them. I didn't care about what they were going through -- Tom and his divorce, Danny going through the trauma of trudging up his past -- and found myself pushing through just so I wouldn't have a book on my shelf I hadn't finished. We only get to see Tom and Danny talk a couple of times, and those encounters are perfunctory and frustrating, with flat dialogue and boring revelations.
I'm going to give this one two stars, if only because the book didn't bore me. It annoyed me, but it didn't bore me. It was easy to plow through, and the premise was interesting enough even if the author didn't deliver.
February 17, 2012
Barker's prose is beautifully bleak, breathing life into her setting and characters while maintaining a sense of oppression, as though her fictional England and its people haven't seen the sun for months but manage to hope that at any moment it might break through the clouds.
A story of memories that we often allow to deceive us, buried trauma and the way it creates hidden pathologies, and our sometimes fatal attraction to darkness, Border Crossing showcases our ability and willingness to both manipulate others and allow ourselves to be manipulated—especially by our selves—and does so through the lens of extreme violence committed by children. Stitch this fabric together with threads of skepticism about modern culture and its quietly rabid tendency toward a media-driven mob mentality, the news media itself, our self-absorbed nature and inability to build truly lasting and meaningful relationships, and the sometimes tragic way we embrace the wrong people while overlooking and even ignoring the right ones, and you have one hell of a novel.
The protagonist's self awareness is as refreshing as his subtle ability to plunge ahead despite interior warning bells is startling.
My first taste of Pat Barker. I'll be reading more of her work.
A story of memories that we often allow to deceive us, buried trauma and the way it creates hidden pathologies, and our sometimes fatal attraction to darkness, Border Crossing showcases our ability and willingness to both manipulate others and allow ourselves to be manipulated—especially by our selves—and does so through the lens of extreme violence committed by children. Stitch this fabric together with threads of skepticism about modern culture and its quietly rabid tendency toward a media-driven mob mentality, the news media itself, our self-absorbed nature and inability to build truly lasting and meaningful relationships, and the sometimes tragic way we embrace the wrong people while overlooking and even ignoring the right ones, and you have one hell of a novel.
The protagonist's self awareness is as refreshing as his subtle ability to plunge ahead despite interior warning bells is startling.
My first taste of Pat Barker. I'll be reading more of her work.
July 8, 2025
This is another book that I chose because I was familiar with the author having read some previous books. This is mostly a book of conversations. A child is convicted of murder at a very young age and comes in contact with a psychologist who was involved with his trial a dozen years earlier. It is a fascinating story of two lives that interact.
November 26, 2008
This had some interesting parts, but the way it just sort of trailed off left me disappointed.
April 8, 2020
A bunch of books we had forgotten we had set aside about a decade and a half ago suddenly resurfaced, and for the most part, it has been a pleasant surprise. This one though … not so sure. I thought the author was someone else, a male who had written books I only vaguely remembered, but remembered as enjoyable. So when the style felt completely different I checked the brief bio. I wish I could remember who I had thought Pat Barker was, but it was not this woman. At first I thought I must have gotten this book because of my confusion, but then I discovered that we have several other books by this woman (how did I not know that), so my wife must have recognized her name and if was she who picked it out (wonder if she has read those other books).
Unfortunately my initial confusion has colored by over reaction to the book itself, which is really unfair to this author. But still, having finished I see again the review on the front cover: tremendous piece of writing, sad and terrifying.’ Sad? Yes, somewhat. Terrifying? Except for one brief period about two thirds in, not at all. I think I have figured out the problem lies in two areas.
One is the main character; he seemed so detached; Barker even tells us so: ‘But he was used to switching off, to living his life in separate compartments.’ (13) If he couldn’t get involved, why should I? The second is my impression of the whole story. It felt to me to be a river, a river that split almost before it began, with one branch disappearing underground, to the point of being forgotten altogether. It did appear a couple of times, but usually the closest we got to that branch was a gurgle or two under the rocks.
The main branch glided along, mostly unconcerned by the events surrounding it. Then it suddenly rushed furiously downhill, threatening to fall off a cliff and take us all with it, but … it doesn’t. Instead it too disappears underground and when it comes back it is again ambling to the sea, where it spreads out in an alluvial fan and slides into the ocean.
The End.
Quotes that caught my eye
Clouds sagged over the river, and there was mist like a sweat over the mud flats. (1)
But he was used to switching off, to living his life in separate compartments. He’d learnt early, in his first few months of practice. That those who take the misery home with them burn out and end up so use to anybody. He’s learnt to value detachment: the clinician’s splinter of ice in the heart. Only much later had he learnt to distrust it too – its capacity to grow and take over the personality. Splinter of ice? He’s had colleagues who could have sunk the Titanic. (13-14)
‘It amuses me sometimes to think about the talking cure, and how it’s become a whole bloody industry, and how little evidence there is that it does a scrap of good.’
‘If you mean counselling, there’s quite a bit of evidence that it’s harmful, or can be. People who get counselling immediately after a traumatic event seem to do rather less well on average than those who don’t…. My guess would be that people are meant to go numb, and anything that interferes with that is … potentially dangerous. Equally, of course, the numbness eventually ears off.’ (200)
All these simple actions were so heavily invested with memories that he felt like a priest celebrating Mass. He searched for some way of making the handing over of a glass of red wine seem less sacramental, and failed to find it. (217)
The sun hung over the water, a dull red without rays and without heat, as it might look in the last days of the planet. (220)
Unfortunately my initial confusion has colored by over reaction to the book itself, which is really unfair to this author. But still, having finished I see again the review on the front cover: tremendous piece of writing, sad and terrifying.’ Sad? Yes, somewhat. Terrifying? Except for one brief period about two thirds in, not at all. I think I have figured out the problem lies in two areas.
One is the main character; he seemed so detached; Barker even tells us so: ‘But he was used to switching off, to living his life in separate compartments.’ (13) If he couldn’t get involved, why should I? The second is my impression of the whole story. It felt to me to be a river, a river that split almost before it began, with one branch disappearing underground, to the point of being forgotten altogether. It did appear a couple of times, but usually the closest we got to that branch was a gurgle or two under the rocks.
The main branch glided along, mostly unconcerned by the events surrounding it. Then it suddenly rushed furiously downhill, threatening to fall off a cliff and take us all with it, but … it doesn’t. Instead it too disappears underground and when it comes back it is again ambling to the sea, where it spreads out in an alluvial fan and slides into the ocean.
The End.
Quotes that caught my eye
Clouds sagged over the river, and there was mist like a sweat over the mud flats. (1)
But he was used to switching off, to living his life in separate compartments. He’d learnt early, in his first few months of practice. That those who take the misery home with them burn out and end up so use to anybody. He’s learnt to value detachment: the clinician’s splinter of ice in the heart. Only much later had he learnt to distrust it too – its capacity to grow and take over the personality. Splinter of ice? He’s had colleagues who could have sunk the Titanic. (13-14)
‘It amuses me sometimes to think about the talking cure, and how it’s become a whole bloody industry, and how little evidence there is that it does a scrap of good.’
‘If you mean counselling, there’s quite a bit of evidence that it’s harmful, or can be. People who get counselling immediately after a traumatic event seem to do rather less well on average than those who don’t…. My guess would be that people are meant to go numb, and anything that interferes with that is … potentially dangerous. Equally, of course, the numbness eventually ears off.’ (200)
All these simple actions were so heavily invested with memories that he felt like a priest celebrating Mass. He searched for some way of making the handing over of a glass of red wine seem less sacramental, and failed to find it. (217)
The sun hung over the water, a dull red without rays and without heat, as it might look in the last days of the planet. (220)
June 20, 2013
3.5 In clear, concise and straightforward prose, Barker gives us another psychological novel, this time about a possible child killer. Was the ten year old convicted of killing an 80 yr. old woman, or was he in fact innocent. This is something psychiatrist Tom Seymour must ascertain, not once but twice. The suspense in this book was amazing and the subject matter so fascinating. What makes a psychopath or sociopath? I also like that the ending is not all spelled out and some of it is left to the reader's interpretation, though with plenty of clues. Actually downloaded this author's latest book, "Toby's Room" to my kindle.
July 29, 2011
This was so intense, I was torn between wanting to read the whole thing at one sitting and needing to take a break just to get some mental breathing space. Yes, it was short, but it was so tight; not a word was wasted.
If it was adapted into a screenplay I could see it being the perfect vehicle for a young actor to really prove his acting chops as Danny/Ian in much the same way as Primal Fear was for Edward Norton (who was really the only good thing in the film but, oh, SO good). The source material is certainly far, far superior.
If it was adapted into a screenplay I could see it being the perfect vehicle for a young actor to really prove his acting chops as Danny/Ian in much the same way as Primal Fear was for Edward Norton (who was really the only good thing in the film but, oh, SO good). The source material is certainly far, far superior.
January 30, 2018
Pat Barker takes the reader through an uncomfortable journey into the psychology of a perceived criminal mind. Society dehumanises those that break certain laws allowing a moral hegemony. Barker offers no such respite and relentlessly challenges preconceived notions of the reader, decisions of lawmakers and societal perceptions; and offers a view of the devastating effect this can have on an individual. It is such brilliant psychological journey that certain factual inaccuracies can be ignored.
March 7, 2017
Man Pat Barker knows how to write. The tension was palpable at certain points in the book.
August 15, 2024
I don't know what to feel about this book. I think I will forget about it real quick - it didn't leave much of an impression. While reading, I was waiting eagerly for some kind of plot twist that didn't come. Still, after reading, I wonder what the book's plot really was. I don't understand the character of Danny completely, which bothers me a lot, because in a way he's what the story is all about.
It wasn't a bad read, I enjoyed it and finished it easily, but I guess I hoped for something more.
It wasn't a bad read, I enjoyed it and finished it easily, but I guess I hoped for something more.
July 26, 2017
O começo até é razoável, mas a história pouco ou nada se desenvolve a partir daí, sendo bastante desinteressante. As personagens não são desenvolvidas e a escrita é confusa e desmotivadora. Este livro foi uma desilusão tão grande que levei 10 dias a conseguir acabá-lo, sendo que, numa situação normal e dado o seu tamanho, teria sido lido numas 3/4h.
January 19, 2021
There were moments where this felt close to being AMAZING but it overall landed on just very good. Which is still good :)
November 3, 2025
2014 review from Rachel summed it up perfectly for me.
Was determined that this book was not a ‘dnf’ but it was very depressing and I could t wait to finish it .
Was determined that this book was not a ‘dnf’ but it was very depressing and I could t wait to finish it .
February 1, 2020
Social topics never disappear from the stage, where the #humanity is defined.
How to build the life after being release from #prison.
How to give your hand to someone, who have made mistake.
How to see light when the world collapses at your door?
Read and feel together...
How to build the life after being release from #prison.
How to give your hand to someone, who have made mistake.
How to see light when the world collapses at your door?
Read and feel together...
August 29, 2015
Psychologist Tom Seymour is out walking with his semi-estranged wife Lauren along the Tyne riverside when ahead of them they see a young man try to commit suicide by swallowing a handful of pills and throwing himself into the water. Tom dives in and saves the man; Lauren summons the cops. They both reckon they recognize the supposed stranger: it's Danny Miller who, 13 years ago, Tom analyzed and evaluated during Danny's trial for the murder and mutilation of an old woman. Danny was aged just ten at the time, so the case scandalized the nation, with all the usual dimwit arseholes claiming they'd gladly pull the lever themselves, etc.
Danny, an attractively feminine youth, was sentenced to psychiatric care, spending the last couple of years in a jail where he was raped. Now he's out on probation under an assumed name on some kind of identity-protection scheme. His probation officer Martha happens to be a friend of Tom's -- they've worked together on other cases -- and between them they arrange that Danny can seek some sort of counseling at Tom's hands: not so much any sort of psychotherapy as just an arrangement whereby Danny can unburden himself.
And so, as Tom's marriage to Lauren collapses around him, he finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into the world of Danny, who proves to be -- and always to have been -- a highly manipulative, outwardly charming sociopath . . . which doesn't mean, of course, that he's murderer, or that, if he is a murderer, he's likely ever to kill again . . .
Read simply as a thriller, Border Crossing is stunningly effective. But there's more to its agenda than that. Part of the agenda is a probing of the nature of evil: is Danny evil because of the evil act he (presumably) committed? and, if that were the case, need it essentially follow that today's Danny is still evil?
Tom has some difficulty working this out. Is he himself just the latest victim of Danny's manipulatory skills? Or could it be the case that, despite what Tom thought thirteen years ago, Danny is actually innocent, his modern-day confessions to the crime not so much a description of what actually happened as a narrative he finds it easier to iterate than the truth?
What's wonderful about this book is that it leaves these questions open and yet, at the same time, comes to a perfectly satisfying conclusion.
The book's not blemishless. There's a sequence in a writers' retreat (or thereabouts) that's good, because it rings true, for a few cheap laughs, but at the same time it's quite extraneous to the plot.
The only novel of Barker's that I've read before ia The Man who Wasn't There (2001). I was a bit iffy about that book but I'm much more positive about this one. One of those few novels that I might, somewhere down the line, reread.
Danny, an attractively feminine youth, was sentenced to psychiatric care, spending the last couple of years in a jail where he was raped. Now he's out on probation under an assumed name on some kind of identity-protection scheme. His probation officer Martha happens to be a friend of Tom's -- they've worked together on other cases -- and between them they arrange that Danny can seek some sort of counseling at Tom's hands: not so much any sort of psychotherapy as just an arrangement whereby Danny can unburden himself.
And so, as Tom's marriage to Lauren collapses around him, he finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into the world of Danny, who proves to be -- and always to have been -- a highly manipulative, outwardly charming sociopath . . . which doesn't mean, of course, that he's murderer, or that, if he is a murderer, he's likely ever to kill again . . .
Read simply as a thriller, Border Crossing is stunningly effective. But there's more to its agenda than that. Part of the agenda is a probing of the nature of evil: is Danny evil because of the evil act he (presumably) committed? and, if that were the case, need it essentially follow that today's Danny is still evil?
Tom has some difficulty working this out. Is he himself just the latest victim of Danny's manipulatory skills? Or could it be the case that, despite what Tom thought thirteen years ago, Danny is actually innocent, his modern-day confessions to the crime not so much a description of what actually happened as a narrative he finds it easier to iterate than the truth?
What's wonderful about this book is that it leaves these questions open and yet, at the same time, comes to a perfectly satisfying conclusion.
The book's not blemishless. There's a sequence in a writers' retreat (or thereabouts) that's good, because it rings true, for a few cheap laughs, but at the same time it's quite extraneous to the plot.
The only novel of Barker's that I've read before ia The Man who Wasn't There (2001). I was a bit iffy about that book but I'm much more positive about this one. One of those few novels that I might, somewhere down the line, reread.
December 25, 2013
There be spoilers
Beautifully written but a feint. You think it's going to be the conventional story of a murderer psychologically worming his way into the life of the man who sent him to prison, so that he can enact his revenge. But late in this slim tale, that's not what happens. I don't know whether to be pleased Barker didn't complete the cliche or disappointed that she set it up so well as the cliche. Unfortunately, Barker didn't make her child murderer, now grown up, into a full person--he's more like the shark in Jaws, a suspense tool. Because she has written it that way, making characters have their own worries and fears about him, having the characters say how great at manipulation he is. This aspect is told not shown. It doesn't go anywhere.
If she wanted to examine the lives--physical, emotional and mental--of child murderers after they've been released and are trying to live a life, she shouldn't have written the novel from the psychologist's point of view. If she wanted a look at how we view redemption and how hard it is, she shouldn't have given the young man those great powers of manipulation, setting us up to think that he was lying when he wanted sessions to get to the bottom of what he did.
This might be a novel about seeing clearly. There are symbols, I presume, about what dreams mean and the occluded and muddy state of rivers. The psychologist's failing marriage plot may mean that he didn't see clearly his marriage ending. Likewise, he doesn't clearly see the change in the young murderer. But then the young man almost sets fire to his house in a sleepwalking daze, so right up until the end, we are not sure whether he's dangerous or not. Or the novel could simply be a thriller with a twist nonending. But that ending felt like it came from a different book. A more serious novel on the state of the juvenile justice system, on the complex lives of child murderers would have been longer than what this is. But it beautifully written and it works as a thriller if in fact that is what it's trying to be. I haven't read her Restoration trilogy, but maybe after all that weight, she wanted to do something lighter. What's always possible is that I'm misreading and that she's trying to do something far more subtle. Not having read anything else by her, I don't know what preoccupations and themes she has that she has put in here.
Beautifully written but a feint. You think it's going to be the conventional story of a murderer psychologically worming his way into the life of the man who sent him to prison, so that he can enact his revenge. But late in this slim tale, that's not what happens. I don't know whether to be pleased Barker didn't complete the cliche or disappointed that she set it up so well as the cliche. Unfortunately, Barker didn't make her child murderer, now grown up, into a full person--he's more like the shark in Jaws, a suspense tool. Because she has written it that way, making characters have their own worries and fears about him, having the characters say how great at manipulation he is. This aspect is told not shown. It doesn't go anywhere.
If she wanted to examine the lives--physical, emotional and mental--of child murderers after they've been released and are trying to live a life, she shouldn't have written the novel from the psychologist's point of view. If she wanted a look at how we view redemption and how hard it is, she shouldn't have given the young man those great powers of manipulation, setting us up to think that he was lying when he wanted sessions to get to the bottom of what he did.
This might be a novel about seeing clearly. There are symbols, I presume, about what dreams mean and the occluded and muddy state of rivers. The psychologist's failing marriage plot may mean that he didn't see clearly his marriage ending. Likewise, he doesn't clearly see the change in the young murderer. But then the young man almost sets fire to his house in a sleepwalking daze, so right up until the end, we are not sure whether he's dangerous or not. Or the novel could simply be a thriller with a twist nonending. But that ending felt like it came from a different book. A more serious novel on the state of the juvenile justice system, on the complex lives of child murderers would have been longer than what this is. But it beautifully written and it works as a thriller if in fact that is what it's trying to be. I haven't read her Restoration trilogy, but maybe after all that weight, she wanted to do something lighter. What's always possible is that I'm misreading and that she's trying to do something far more subtle. Not having read anything else by her, I don't know what preoccupations and themes she has that she has put in here.
April 14, 2013
This was one of the many books I had to read for school this year and I was surprised to find that I didn't hate it. Towards the end I actually stayed up into the early hours of the morning to read what happened because I was so compelled. Too bad the ending was an anti-climax...
I guess there's always going to be a level of enjoyment when I initally thought this was literally about crossing borders. You know, refugees and stuff. I was so not looking forward to writing my six thousandth essay on the treatment and life of refugees. No--this book was actually about a very interesting and quite relevant topic. I think that it didn't really explore every aspect of the issue that it could have and that there was a lot thrown in for shock value (especially all that with the teacher and ). The most compelling component of the book was the way Pat Barker made Danny into a sort of mythic character with likeable qualities. Although the end was a disappointment--I felt like it never went deep enough and spent way too much time on the childhood--the final scene was actually very interesting because I realised I was doing exactly what the book was reflecting on--focusing on the killer and his personality and his life rather then remembering the woman killed.
It wasn't an overly emotional book and the whole plot felt thrown in and random but I think the mood and tone set by the book and the overall issue it discussed was quite good. It'll be one of my favourite school books of the year although that isn't saying much when I'm reading stuff like The Children's Bach. I'm looking forward to discussing the context of the book and the issues raised.
I guess there's always going to be a level of enjoyment when I initally thought this was literally about crossing borders. You know, refugees and stuff. I was so not looking forward to writing my six thousandth essay on the treatment and life of refugees. No--this book was actually about a very interesting and quite relevant topic. I think that it didn't really explore every aspect of the issue that it could have and that there was a lot thrown in for shock value (especially all that with the teacher and ). The most compelling component of the book was the way Pat Barker made Danny into a sort of mythic character with likeable qualities. Although the end was a disappointment--I felt like it never went deep enough and spent way too much time on the childhood--the final scene was actually very interesting because I realised I was doing exactly what the book was reflecting on--focusing on the killer and his personality and his life rather then remembering the woman killed.
It wasn't an overly emotional book and the whole plot felt thrown in and random but I think the mood and tone set by the book and the overall issue it discussed was quite good. It'll be one of my favourite school books of the year although that isn't saying much when I'm reading stuff like The Children's Bach. I'm looking forward to discussing the context of the book and the issues raised.
March 2, 2015
Imagine you’re out for a walk one weekend and see a young man swallow handful of pills and jump into the river. Without thinking – or perhaps even as a distraction from the torment of your failing marriage – you strip off your heavy coat and plunge into the river to save him. Much later, after the ambulance has driven him away and you’ve sloughed off the river’s mud in a hot bath, you realise you’ve got the young man’s coat and, more to the point, he’s got yours, with a set of spare house keys in the pocket, along with a bunch of letters bearing your name and address. So you hot-foot it to the hospital to do a swap.
You’re surprised when the young man recognises you, not from your heroics at the river, but from your professional life as a clinical psychologist working with disturbed adolescents. When he gives his name, it all comes back: Danny Miller more than a decade on from the ten-year-old you assessed for his suitability to stand trial for murder. A year out of prison, he’s been given a new identity as a student in the city, but his evident vulnerability makes it difficult for you to just walk away. Given that you’re currently on sabbatical leave from your clinical work, which of the following lines of action would most readily come to mind?
• speak to the ward staff (whom you know) about referring Danny to the mental health services
• contact his probation officer (who also happens to be a personal friend)
• invite him to visit you at home for “a chat”
Full review http://annegoodwin.weebly.com/annecdo...
You’re surprised when the young man recognises you, not from your heroics at the river, but from your professional life as a clinical psychologist working with disturbed adolescents. When he gives his name, it all comes back: Danny Miller more than a decade on from the ten-year-old you assessed for his suitability to stand trial for murder. A year out of prison, he’s been given a new identity as a student in the city, but his evident vulnerability makes it difficult for you to just walk away. Given that you’re currently on sabbatical leave from your clinical work, which of the following lines of action would most readily come to mind?
• speak to the ward staff (whom you know) about referring Danny to the mental health services
• contact his probation officer (who also happens to be a personal friend)
• invite him to visit you at home for “a chat”
Full review http://annegoodwin.weebly.com/annecdo...
December 30, 2012
Tom and Lauren are out walking along the deserted Newcastle waterfront one dismal grey afternoon when they suddenly notice a young man at the water's edge - a young man who appears to swallow a bottle of pills, and then throws himself into the icy current. Instinctively Tom jumps in to save him, drags him to shore, wraps him in a coat and calls for an ambulance. Although he feels a vague interest in the outcome, it isn't until he realizes he has wrapped the unknown man in his own coat that he decides to go to the hospital to check up on him. That is when he discovers that the stranger is in fact Danny Miller, and thirteen years earlier Tom was an expert witness at Danny's trial for the murder of an elderly widow when Danny was just ten years old. Is this just a coincidence or has Danny in fact come looking for Tom?
I found this book to be at once chilling and compelling. I could hardly put the book down and yet at the same time the depiction of the child killer is almost sinister enough to be off-putting. I really enjoy the wat Pat Barker writes. My only complaint would be that I thought the ending fell rather flat.
I found this book to be at once chilling and compelling. I could hardly put the book down and yet at the same time the depiction of the child killer is almost sinister enough to be off-putting. I really enjoy the wat Pat Barker writes. My only complaint would be that I thought the ending fell rather flat.
October 29, 2025
Obviously, if you take a particular individual and change his environment, completely, for a long time, he’s going to learn new tricks. He’s got to, the old tricks don’t work any more, and he’s an organism that’s programmed to survive.
3.5 stars?
As psychological suspense novel, I think it worked well.
The flashback about Tom’s youth where he could have caused a death set up a highly interesting comparison. Children do understand death and still they act wrong. But is Danny somehow ‘worse’ than Tom because he succeeded and Tom didn’t? Is Tom ‘worse’ for having a key role in getting Danny convicted? Did he even present correct evidence that Danny knew killing was wrong given how Danny grew up?
The conversations surrounding Danny’s history were laced with a certain kind of dread that came off the pages.
Everything else felt meh, maybe because the book is less than 300 pages and it’s hard to put a proper subplot in that amount.
The whole failing marriage thing made my eyes roll.
Tom doesn’t like feeling like he exists as a sperm bank for Lauren? I don’t like that Lauren’s character felt like it existed as a cheap sympathy ploy for Tom.
3.5 stars?
As psychological suspense novel, I think it worked well.
The flashback about Tom’s youth where he could have caused a death set up a highly interesting comparison. Children do understand death and still they act wrong. But is Danny somehow ‘worse’ than Tom because he succeeded and Tom didn’t? Is Tom ‘worse’ for having a key role in getting Danny convicted? Did he even present correct evidence that Danny knew killing was wrong given how Danny grew up?
The conversations surrounding Danny’s history were laced with a certain kind of dread that came off the pages.
Everything else felt meh, maybe because the book is less than 300 pages and it’s hard to put a proper subplot in that amount.
The whole failing marriage thing made my eyes roll.
Tom doesn’t like feeling like he exists as a sperm bank for Lauren? I don’t like that Lauren’s character felt like it existed as a cheap sympathy ploy for Tom.
April 5, 2015
I very much enjoyed this book. Although short it was an intense read and 'unputdownable'. When Lauren and Tom are out walking they come across an apparent suicide. The boy, Danny, however is known to Tom from a past case, when Tom appeared as an expert witness at Danny's trial. As Tom and Danny reconnect the story explores Danny's past and Tom's current states of mind. It appears initially that Danny intends harm towards Tom, whom he blames at least partly for his conviction. Tension is ratcheted as people warn Tom off Danny, but events in Tom's own life and the events in the wider world intercept and Tom is able to carry on his life. The end of the story is not neatly tied up but sufficiently told so that readers can imagine where the characters go after. I love that the characters are still swirling about in my head after I've finished reading this. The mark of an enjoyable story.
May 18, 2017
Tom jumps into the Tyne to rescue a young man from drowning. Something about the youth triggers a memory that makes him believe that he knows him...from where. Later at casualty it becomes clear that Ian is the adult incarnation of a boy he, as a child psychologist, had determined capable of being tried as an adult for the murder of an elderly woman when he was 10. Ian was Danny, and Danny has issues that he feels only Tom can help him with. Danny will trust no one else as he tries to find meaning of the events which lead to his conviction. Tom and Danny explore the bounds of good and evil, truth and fiction. Has Tom crossed professional lines? Can he get back to where they should be, or have they crossed borders that will forever change them.
January 15, 2019
The book is well written, and the characters are believable. The problem is there is never really any tension. I expected the book to reach a fairly dramatic climax, but it felt, in the end, that the story never really went anywhere. As a reader, I was left wanting more - but not for good reasons.
February 27, 2013
I could read nothing but Pat Barker to the end of my days. I mean, not really. But you know what I mean.
June 1, 2015
WORST BOOK OF MY LIFE
February 8, 2025
Danny mató (según él no) a una anciana y se ensañó terroríficamente con su cadáver muchas horas después. Tenía 10 años. 13 años después vuelve a verse con el psiquiatra que testificó que era plenamente consciente de lo que significaba matar y le pide que le ayude a entender ese momento de su vida.
La historia te engancha por genera una mezcla de estupefacción e interés:
Estupefacción porque en ningún momento, tal y como vemos ahora ese tipo de casos con menores, se trata de ayudar psicológicamente o de reinsertar emocionalmente al niño. No solo el sistema parece pobre, sino que todo el tiempo se trata al chico como a un adulto- tenga 10, 16 o 23 años-, es sorprendente. Este libro es de 2001 pero no hay ni un intento de "comprender" los mecanismos que llevaron a eso punto al niño. Para todos es un psicópata manipulador del que son víctimas porque les fascina pero la autora no da claves reales para eso, no describe eso. Describe a un chico que dicen que es fascinante- su escritura no plasma eso-, manipulador- tampoco queda explícito mediante la escritura aunque la autora cree que lo logra- y con graves problemas psicológicos/psiquiátricos- que se intuyen pero nada muy remarcado-. La autora no es sutil,como es su intención, es directamente nula. No transmite ambigüedad o "entrelineado" trasmite que no comprende a sus propios personajes.
Interés porque estás tan fascinada por la poca lógica de la actuación de todos los involucrados que quieres saber como termina.
La trama del divorcio y la impotencia de psiquiatra debe ser algún tipo de metáfora de algo que no he captado porque sino no entiendo para que ha escrito algo tan insustancial y ridículo.
La autora intenta todo el tiempo jugar a la sutileza y termina dándonos un final bien mascado sobre su opinión sobre la reinserción del chico y el papel de la señora muerta.
En resumen, la historia no logra empatía con ningún personajes y hace pensar porque el tema es interesante pero no porque la autora realice las preguntas correctas con la historia. Para mí, es una novela fallida en forma y fondo.
La historia te engancha por genera una mezcla de estupefacción e interés:
Estupefacción porque en ningún momento, tal y como vemos ahora ese tipo de casos con menores, se trata de ayudar psicológicamente o de reinsertar emocionalmente al niño. No solo el sistema parece pobre, sino que todo el tiempo se trata al chico como a un adulto- tenga 10, 16 o 23 años-, es sorprendente. Este libro es de 2001 pero no hay ni un intento de "comprender" los mecanismos que llevaron a eso punto al niño. Para todos es un psicópata manipulador del que son víctimas porque les fascina pero la autora no da claves reales para eso, no describe eso. Describe a un chico que dicen que es fascinante- su escritura no plasma eso-, manipulador- tampoco queda explícito mediante la escritura aunque la autora cree que lo logra- y con graves problemas psicológicos/psiquiátricos- que se intuyen pero nada muy remarcado-. La autora no es sutil,como es su intención, es directamente nula. No transmite ambigüedad o "entrelineado" trasmite que no comprende a sus propios personajes.
Interés porque estás tan fascinada por la poca lógica de la actuación de todos los involucrados que quieres saber como termina.
La trama del divorcio y la impotencia de psiquiatra debe ser algún tipo de metáfora de algo que no he captado porque sino no entiendo para que ha escrito algo tan insustancial y ridículo.
La autora intenta todo el tiempo jugar a la sutileza y termina dándonos un final bien mascado sobre su opinión sobre la reinserción del chico y el papel de la señora muerta.
En resumen, la historia no logra empatía con ningún personajes y hace pensar porque el tema es interesante pero no porque la autora realice las preguntas correctas con la historia. Para mí, es una novela fallida en forma y fondo.
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