Borderline

A new novel by award-winning novelist Janette Turner Hospital is a literary event of interest. Winner of the Seal First Novel Award in 1982 for The Ivory Swing, her work is attracting attention both in Canada and internationally.

The plot of this third novel gives the reader a mystery to unravel. The paths of an attractive art historian and an insurance salesman cross as they unwittingly become involved in the smuggling of illegal immigrants from faction-torn Central America. Waiting in line at a Canada/U.S. border crossing, they witness the discovery of a group of fugitives by border police and, in an instinctive humanitarian gesture, rescue a woman from the group. The subsequent violent and confusing events in which the protagonists become implicated are pieced together by a narrator, step-son of the art historian who is fascinated by his beautiful step-mother and her mysterious disappearance.

The novel raises the issue of the proximity of violence to the apparently secure North American middle-class way of life. When the protagonists become enmeshed in the violent world of the political fugitives, life becomes a nightmare where events no longer follow orderly rules. However, although the protagonists cross the border to this nightmare existence, the narrator never enters. The violence is seen from the other side of the fence, remaining remote from everyday reality, and the spine-chilling horror that follows when the logic of normality comes unstuck is not directly experienced in this book.

The plot turns on murder and political violence, yet the use of a non-involved narrator and the ambience in which he moves, as well as the polished style Hospital adopts, keep the reader in a refined world of art, music, and fine things. This is essentially a mystery story, and the treatment of violence remains peripheral.

However, Janette Turner Hospital is a splendid storyteller, and her narration lures the reader on to solve the mysterious disappearance of the main characters in a plot that is full of surprising and well-paced twists and turns. Like the novel’s voyeuristic narrator, the reader is enthralled by the hints of violence beneath the orderly surface of a seemingly secure society.