SOURCE: Unsworth, Barry. “School of Thought.” Spectator 274, no. 8701 (15 April 1995): 36–37.

In the following review, Unsworth offers a negative assessment of Borderliners, and accuses Høeg of sacrificing the novel's plot in order to make a political statement.

I don't know if there are many people who really think, when they look back at things, that schooldays are the happiest of one's life. Certainly [Borderliners] deals a lethal blow to the adage. The school in question here is an experimental private one called Biehl's Academy and among the pupils are three emotionally damaged children, the borderliners of the title, who have been sent there for assessment. Will they prove able to adjust to ‘normal’ school life or will it be necessary to relegate them to special institutions for the retarded or disturbed?

The irony—and the peculiar horror—derive from the fact that this school, for which they must prove...