A Gripping Tale Out Of School

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By Laura Shapiro

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Peter Hoeg has been a popular novelist in his native Denmark for years, but hardly anybody in this country had heard of him until ""Smilla's Sense of Snow'' appeared here last year. What a calling card! A brainy, witty thriller, ""Smilla'' caused a sensation; when Hoeg mentioned in interviews that he had finished another novel, his new fans were delighted. ""It's very different,'' he said at the time.

(Translated by Barbara Haveland. 277 pages. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. $22) is very different -- a denser, more introspective novel than ""Smilla,'' with fewer of its easy pleasures. It's set in Biehl's Academy, a boarding school known for its high standards and willingness to take difficult children -- like Peter, the narrator. An orphan who has experienced the brutality of Denmark's child-welfare system, he meets still more physical and psychological repression at Biehl's. With his friends Katarina, a strong survivor of childhood horrors, and August, much frailer, Peter sets out to uncover the secret experiment he senses going on behind the school's grim functioning.

Writing in Peter's cool, clipped narrative voice, which remains uninflected whether he is describing his yearning for a family or his escape from a molesting teacher, Hoeg keeps such tight control of these hefty issues that the novel sometimes feels choked. Yet the well-crafted suspense, the emotions that strike unexpectedly and the intimate portrayal of Peter himself make this a forceful tale. The ending is especially charged. According to the publisher, ""Borderliners'' is not autobiographical, but Hoeg appears to have a powerful personal stake in these ideas and events. Just as with ""Smilla,'' one question hangs in the air when the last page is turned: when do we get his next book?

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