SOURCE: "Clock and Watch," in New Statesman and Society, Vol. 7, No. 334, January 6, 1995, p. 37.

In the following review of Borderliners, Smith positively assesses the novel and finds that Høeg "writes with a sense of ambiguity that seems appropriate to the voice of the disturbed."

Borderliners is Peter Høeg's second novel to appear in English translation. Written with extraordinary intellectual and creative energy, it explores the plight of three children caught within a rigorous and idealistic education system. Although not as accessible as Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, the sense that Høeg's writing is so passionately felt makes this a compelling and curiously moving work.

The "borderliners" of the title are society's "unaccountable children"—emotionally deprived orphans, abused and abusive infants, some with mental handicaps. At Biehl's Academy in 1971 they are the subject of an experiment to integrate abnormal children into a normal school (and society), with...