- Hardcover: 224 pages
- Publisher: Viking; 1st Edition edition (29 Mar 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0670878413
- ISBN-13: 978-0670878413
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16.3 x 2.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,265,648 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Border Crossing
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Border Crossing is haunted by one of the most disturbing figures in contemporary English culture: the child who kills. The award-winning Regeneration trilogy established Pat Barker's reputation as a novelist able to revive the traumas of war at the beginning of the 20th century. But her most recent fiction (Another World and, now, Border Crossing) revisits the terrain of her first novels (Union Street, Blow Your House Down). The dismal, if commonplace, violence of family life, violence between husbands and wives, fathers and children, children and children is explored alongside the more sensational story of a young man, Danny, whom, tracking down the psychologist who helped to convict him for the murder he committed as a child, wants to "talk about how impossible it was to leave the past behind". A tense, and seductive, relation develops between Danny and Tom Seymour, a professional forced to make his own return to a past in which he has played a defining part in someone else's life. As the brutal details of Danny's crime emerge, Barker confronts the possibilities of cure through time, through speech, through the attention given by one man to another. Danny is a man who is "very, very good at getting people to step across that invisible border", a character who draws attention to the pain, and helplessness, of having been a child. But Border Crossing also refuses to lose sight of his victim. The mutilated body of Lizzie Parks makes a claim on Danny, on Barker and on her readers as this novel probes the relation between Danny and Tom for the "only possible good outcome" of an irreparable act. --Vicky Lebeau
Review
"It's her canny feel for the psyche's ambiguous meanderings, more than plot twists, that generates most of the thrills . . . This author creates an atmosphere of menace worthy of a Joyce Carol Oates."—Dan Cryer, "Newsday"
"Barker soars to new heights with this harrowing, contemporary study of fate tainted by the stench of evil."—Robert Allen Papinchak, "USA Today"
"Barker creates a sense of menace worth of Ian McEwan . . . "Border Crossing" is replete with sharp, expressive exchanges, hard poetry, and as many enigmas as implacable truths."—Kerry Field, "The Atlantic Monthly"
"Barker writes with compelling urgency—"Border Crossing" is to be read in one sitting."—Joan Mellen, "The Baltimore Sun"
"Exhilerating moral exploration, and prose as naked and jolting as an unwrapped live wire."—Richard Eder, "The New York Times Book Review"
"Pat barker understands the dynamics of psychic and shutdown as well as any writer living . . . In "Bo --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
"Barker soars to new heights with this harrowing, contemporary study of fate tainted by the stench of evil."—Robert Allen Papinchak, "USA Today"
"Barker creates a sense of menace worth of Ian McEwan . . . "Border Crossing" is replete with sharp, expressive exchanges, hard poetry, and as many enigmas as implacable truths."—Kerry Field, "The Atlantic Monthly"
"Barker writes with compelling urgency—"Border Crossing" is to be read in one sitting."—Joan Mellen, "The Baltimore Sun"
"Exhilerating moral exploration, and prose as naked and jolting as an unwrapped live wire."—Richard Eder, "The New York Times Book Review"
"Pat barker understands the dynamics of psychic and shutdown as well as any writer living . . . In "Bo --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
They were walking along the river path, away from the city, and as far as they knew they were alone. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
They were walking along the river path, away from the city, and as far as they knew they were alone. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is the only one of Pat Barker's modern day books that I've really loved - not quite as much as the regeneration trilogy, but almost. One of her great talents is to draw characters who are wholly sympathetic without being wholly, or perhaps even slightly, admirable. Barker manipulates the reader's opinion of Danny, the child-murderer, cleverly, so that he is experienced as distressed and suicidal adult, abused child, cold and manipulative teenager. We experience Danny in the same way many of the book's characters do; knowing that he is an expert at drawing people in and winning their sympathy, yet being drawn in anyway. This keeps you off-balance, at one moment frightened for Danny and at the next frightened of him. The narrative has a wonderful simplicity and lightness of touch, so that the potentially lurid subject matter comes across as low-key and quietly disturbing. I read it in a couple of hours, and have been rereading parts of it ever since. Highly recommended.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If you’ve ever watched The Simpsons and seen a joke unfold in front of you that is so brilliant in its both its conception and delivery, but not actually laughed out loud, instead stared at the TV and appreciated the technical perfection, your mind saying "That is the funniest thing I have ever seen", then I think you will understand a little the emotional response of reading Pat Barker’s extraordinary 'Border Crossing'.
Which is not to say Barker’s novel is a comedy. Far from it. It is a tight, discomforting, sometimes thrilling novel that investigates an important idea that is so often discussed in newspapers, though rarely with the degree of cool intelligence that Barker shows here. If you like Ian McKewan, I imagine you will also like Barker. She writes concisely, never wasting an idea, a thought, a plot shift, or a nuance in the telling of this inquisitively psychological novel.
Danny is a young man who was convicted of murder as a child. He is now free, living under an different name, trying to find a way to exist in a world that would see him lynched, if the images in newspapers like the 'Mail' told the full story. Tom Seymour is the psychologist who interviewed Danny at the time of the murder and crucially gave the evidence that saw him convicted under the disturbing categorisation of having full cognisance of what he was doing. Though not a teenager, Danny was well aware that killing was wrong, Seymour posits, and this is something that Danny has had to come to terms with while locked away.
The story begins with Seymour walking by a river in the winter and spotting a young man fall in. This young man, who he dives in to rescue, turns out to be Danny, and the meeting precipitates a renewal of their relationship.
It would be a shame to give away what happens from then on. The taut plot perfectly marries with Barker’s psychological and philosophical investigation into what society thinks of children such as Danny. It raises searching questions and drags your mind kicking and screaming into territory it would most often prefer to avoid. And this makes it a brilliant book. Though perhaps not the easiest book to enjoy. In short, almost terse prose, such an enormous subject is treated with chilling intelligence.
Barker has written a thriller, but one that does so much more than expected. It is a novel of ideas, and difficult ideas at that. The only hesitation I have in recommending 'Border Crossing', is that it leaves the reader coated with a sickening sensation. Whether it is fear brought about by the unfolding dread of the story, or whether it is the reader’s own sense of pusillanimous intellectual rigour when addressing such dark concerns, is a question I will have to leave up to you.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
To what extent can a child can be held responsible for their actions? Can they change? Do they deserve a second chance?
Tom, a psychologist encounters Danny, who was his patient as a child and at whose trial he gave evidence. Although Danny has served his time, he is haunted by the past and by a crime he still hasn't come to terms with committing.
Tom has his own problems, and Danny fills a void as his marriage comes to an end. However whilst wanting to help, Tom's concerned that Danny may be manipulating him as he may have manipulated others in his life.
The events that make Danny feel hunted were conveyed well, showing how almost impossible it is to make a new start in our society. I also felt Tom's empathy with Danny was very realistic and honest. He recalls an event from his own childhood that he feels would have ended differently if it weren't for the intervention of an adult. Sometimes we're quick to condemn and forget what being a child was like, how sometimes children can get into situations they don't know how to get out of.
Rather than giving us all the answers in neat little story we're encouraged to come to our own conclusions which made for a more interesting read.
Tom, a psychologist encounters Danny, who was his patient as a child and at whose trial he gave evidence. Although Danny has served his time, he is haunted by the past and by a crime he still hasn't come to terms with committing.
Tom has his own problems, and Danny fills a void as his marriage comes to an end. However whilst wanting to help, Tom's concerned that Danny may be manipulating him as he may have manipulated others in his life.
The events that make Danny feel hunted were conveyed well, showing how almost impossible it is to make a new start in our society. I also felt Tom's empathy with Danny was very realistic and honest. He recalls an event from his own childhood that he feels would have ended differently if it weren't for the intervention of an adult. Sometimes we're quick to condemn and forget what being a child was like, how sometimes children can get into situations they don't know how to get out of.
Rather than giving us all the answers in neat little story we're encouraged to come to our own conclusions which made for a more interesting read.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
A Compelling Psychological Thriller
A fairly short novel of just over 200 pages, but I found it extremely hard to put down. There are some really important issues addressed within the story - mainly centred on how... Read more
Published on 28 Feb 2009 by Lincs Reader
Not her best
I loved the First World War trilogy - pace, horror and a well told tale, but this book starts off "quite" interestingly, but then seems to tail off with no apparent resolution. Read more
Published on 1 Jan 2009 by M. R. N. Shackelford
Disturbing but thought provoking
This was quite a tense, emotional read. A child murderer bares his soul to a psychologist - yet in the end we are left to draw our own conclusions as to Danny's true character and... Read more
Published on 28 Oct 2007 by DubaiReader
Very matter of fact
This was a great book to read and quite chilling but in a very calm manner. Tom Seymour unthinkily pulls a suicide victim out of the river; it turns out he is a child murderer who... Read more
Published on 16 Aug 2007 by SJSmith
Unusual, well-written, thought-provoking page-turner.
Border Crossing deals with a very unusual subject, and I found the "talking heads" approach to the storyline very appealing. Read more
Published on 14 Jan 2006
"Regeneration" revamped
When child psychologist Tom Seymour pulls a would-be suicide from a river, he recognises the young man as Danny Miller, the child whom Tom's assessment had helped imprison for the... Read more
Published on 7 Feb 2004 by Klytemnestra
Left me disappointed
The start of the book seemed to offer so much when two characters, who had dealings in the distant past, crossed paths. Read more
Published on 2 Dec 2003
Barker in provocative and thoughtful mode
This is a somewhat darker and more thoughtful novel from Pat Barker, something that is essential reading for all of those interested in childcare and adolescents. Read more
Published on 5 July 2003 by Andrew Howell
A contemporary study of child psychology
This book, although not one of the greatest I have ever read, is extremely relevant in light of the recent release of John Venables and Robert Thompson. Read more
Published on 12 July 2001
Thoughtful, topical and challenging!
Not sure that this automatically warrants 5 stars, but this is a fascinating book dealing - as before - with pyscholoical trauma. Read more
Published on 8 Jun 2001
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