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Title: Border Crossing : A Novel by Pat Barker ISBN: 0-312-42019-6 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 09 February, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.87 (15 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Shades of the Past
Comment: To be haunted by the ghost of someone dead is a disconcerting enough experience, but the ramifications of a haunting by the living are far more immediate and potentially devastating. Tom Seymour, the protaganist of Pat Barker's nuanced novel "Border Crossing" is a renowned psychologist with a failing marriage whose past comes back to him when he rescues a former patient from a possible suicide attempt. But even as he drags the young man half-dead from the ocean, the questions bubble to the surface. Was this a chance meeting? Or had the patient, whom Tom had treated a decade before as part of the legal team prosecuting a young boy for a brutal murder, come back into his life with some kind of sinister purpose?
Answers are elusive as the Tom relives his past, and examines his own culpability in the unravelling of the boy's life. His search for the truth about Danny, a boy who grew to manhood with the shadow of a murder conviction over his head, plays out over the backdrop of Tom's divorce and the questioning of many of the fundamental beliefs of his life. The facts he uncovers, and those he doesn't, give him insight into his own life that seems more necessary than welcome.
If mysteries are the most compelling stories, and people the most complex mysteries, than Pat Barker has created a small masterpiece here. The author puts forward Tom's frustration and obsession with subtle skill, as the puzzle of Danny's persona eludes a solution like a Rubik's cube. Each approach to the truth thwarted starts Tom down a different road, one with new, and possibly more dangerous, consequences.
For such a small book there's much substance here. The writing is gentle and accessible, evenly paced, graced with subtle and thoughtful innuendo. Barker gives us just enough about Danny in the end, not to think we've answered every question, but to imagine we're asking the right ones.
Rating: 3
Summary: Bland
Comment: Barker's WWI saga was fantastic. The characters were real and their problems intense. By contrast this book was bland. I never really cared about them, and even though the book was just 200 pages, I could barely finish it. I never really got a grip on Danny, the child criminal. Was he evil? Or just a troubled kid? What was I supposed to conclude?
The book is told from the point of view of Tom, the therapist. I have a real problem with four or five pages in the middle of the book when the reader is suddenly in the head of a different character. How come? Was this an editing mistake? It contributes nothing to the book. I simply don't understand what it's doing there.
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent thriller that just missed being great
Comment: Pat Barker makes writing seem so easy. Like Muriel Spark, her prose is always crisp, lucid, eloquent and smooth and for these qualities alone, it is always a pleasure to read anything by her. "Border Crossing (BC)", her latest novel, serves up cat and mouse styled mind games played between two protagonists with a shared past whose unlikely connection with each other is revealed after a shocking incident that will alter the course of their lives forever. Barker doesn't waste time setting the scene or building up tension. A distracted Tom Seymour, out on a jog with his wife one evening, witnesses a suicide attempt on the river. It takes him seconds to decide to dive after the man to prevent it. Why did Tom risk his life for a stranger ? Was he responding to the dangers of the moment or the pressures of a crumbling marriage ? This is the sort of question we ask ourselves as the story unfolds. Barker proves she's no novice at writing pyschological thrillers. She skillfully keeps us in a state of anxiety and suspense throughout. There's also a palpable smell of danger in the air and a threat of violence that never quite breaks out. As a thriller, BC works because it's highly absorbing and gripping. Pity the novel never quite develops beyond establishing whether or not Danny committed the murder he was convicted for. Or whether Danny is the master of deception those who comes into contact with him say he is. We do get definitive answers to these questions. We even get to observe and make our own judgements about the horror of society's response to juvenile crime and its aftermath. That Barker never used Danny to hold the mirror to his nemesis' soul and allowed us readers to truly get under Tom's skin is something of a disappointment. BC is a wonderfully accomplished novel. It could have been great one had Barker mined its premise for its full potential. I would give this four and a half stars rating if I could. If not, it's closer to five than four stars. One of the best novels to have been published in 2001.
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Title: Double Vision : A Novel by Pat Barker ISBN: 0374209057 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 09 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker ISBN: 0452272726 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: April, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Ghost Road by Pat Barker ISBN: 0452276721 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: November, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Regeneration by Pat Barker ISBN: 0452270073 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: July, 1993 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Another World : A Novel by Pat Barker ISBN: 0312203977 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 01 December, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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