Re-Reading A Favourite Book: A Question of Upbringing

A month or so ago I posted about re-reading Peter Hoeg's Borderliners for a group's "education" reading theme.

But I also took the opportunity to re-read the first novel in Anthony Powell's 20th century literary cycle Dance To the Music of Time  whose twelve, browning, 1970s paperbacks sit on my shelf. I loved them when I first read them. But would I still? Well here goes. If I had often wondered about picking them up again, this seemed as good a reason as any. The first novel in the cycle - A Question of Upbringing - could fit the "education" theme quite well.

In a drastically different world from Hoeg's story of institutional power and abuse, Powell paints a portrait of a time and place where the possible seeds of influence are sown by the connections formed in a privileged educational establishment.

 Set in early 1920s England, the book establishes some of the "Dance" cycle's central characters - notably its narrator Nicholas Jenkins and the persistent-in-more-ways-than-one Kenneth Widmerpool, a perpetual outsider destined for greater things. They meet at public school (probably modeled on Eton) where, unlike in Hoeg's world of abused children, it seems that in this educational institution an unpopular teacher is as likely to be pilloried as any pupil. Ultimately each young man moves on, either to study at Oxbridge or into business, the law, or the City. Their paths occasionally recross until Jenkins realises that some have diverged so far from his own and into completely other circles that the immediate bonds of friendship seem broken.

In some ways Powell also offers that continuous assessment of class and status during that time that we English are so famously obsessed with. (Are we really the only ones?) The title - "A Question of Upbringing" - may say it all.

...And did I still enjoy reading Powell? Oh yes. It required a step down from "adrenaline thriller mode"... and a recognition of an earlier style of writing... but I still love that elegant understatement and wit that is Anthony Powell at his best.

Re-Reading a Favourite Book: "Borderliners" by Peter Hoeg

Remember I posted about Library Thing and the book groups you can join there?


As part of one group's subject challenge... to read around the theme of "education".... I've just finished re-reading a favourite of mine from the 1990s: Borderliners by Danish writer Peter Hoeg.


Set in Denmark in the early 1970s, the story is narrated from the viewpoint of one of the "borderline" children of the title: three damaged adolescents placed in an elite boarding school as part of a secret experiment in social integration by the Danish Education department. Peter and Katarina, the elder pair, try to look after the third and youngest - August - who is deeply damaged from a life of abuse at the hands of his own parents. Not knowing that they are the subjects of a social experiment, they observe their teachers and those in authority with feral detail in their efforts to interpret a survival pattern for themselves as individuals and as some kind of distorted family group. Their paranoia (if you like) also drives them deep into esoteric theories concerning time. It is a concern that stays with the narrator into adulthood and life in the "laboratory".... his term for everyday life and domesticity. These aspects make the book difficult to read. Some reviews love this complexity and originality... some see it as affectation. Whatever... I found reading Borderliners still to be an intense and moving experience. The book remains a favourite of mine and its denouement is both tragic and triumphant.

I also loved Hoeg's previous novel - Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow which is the book that brought Heog to the attention of the popular reading public. And which I now realise heralded my passion for Scandi-Noir as it falls more easily into the category of crime fiction. But each book Hoeg writes is different. In Borderliners he seems perhaps to have been at the forefront in writing about the damage wrought by institutional abuse (a subject now all too familiar to the contemporary reader) and in writing from the point of view of the psychological outsider. (If you enjoyed Stieg Larsson's Girl With The Dragon Tattoo you may realise how it's anti-hero Lisbeth Salander became who she was... after Hoeg's account of childrens homes, schools and psychological and physical abuse.)

Borderliners is currently "out of print" as I write this. But it is available - either secondhand or as a "print on demand" item - from various sellers via AbeBooks.