SOURCE: Glass, Julia. “Peter Høeg's New Tale of Time, Trauma and Character.” Chicago Tribune Books 148, no. 1 (1 January 1995): 3, 7.

In the following positive review of Borderliners, Glass explores Høeg's recurring themes of time, child neglect, and parenthood.

The narrator of Borderliners, Peter Høeg's new novel, is a man whose lifelong obsession with time—its history, physics and meaning—frames his account of a childhood trauma that nearly destroyed his life. In this brooding, austere tale, set in a state-run orphanage and a prosperous private school, we witness the subtle tyranny of adults and its consequences, both real and imagined, through the eyes of the pupils and wards.

That the dissection and manipulation of time should dominate a story by Høeg will come as no surprise to fans of his previous novel, Smilla's Sense of Snow, a haunting thriller with an extravagant plot, a large cast of...