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Border Songs (2009)

by Jim Lynch(Favorite Author)

3.6 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

030727117X (ISBN13: 9780307271174)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Knopf

review 1: Three stars is about as much as I could muster. Jim Lynch is a talented writer, and I liked the story well enough to keep reading (although that's not saying much--I'm selective enough beforehand that I rarely give up on a book), but what conflict there is, is often told about rather than witnessed, and it's so casually dealt with that the characters don't get to struggle with it and grow their character muscles. The narrative feels like a series of vignettes told from various points of view, loosely connected but without much direction. I didn't fall in love with the characters, so I only lukewarmly pulled for them and didn't worry about them much, and by the end I probably would've been okay with just about any ending I could imagine, even a guardedly optimistic but abru... morept one.
review 2: I thoroughly enjoyed the quirky characters in "Border Songs". The book features a young man with severe dyslexia who is struggling to find a comfortable place in his community with his not so hidden disability. The story moves along at a swift pace as he works as a border guard between Canada and the US and finds he has a knack for his new job. The book is sweet, sometimes sad, and goofy in an unapologetic way and the characters are well rounded enough that I wished I lived in the town described in the book. It captured the feel of the Northwest coast nicely and I found myself racing along to find out what might happen next. less

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