Peter, Katarina and August ' three emotionally damaged children in Biehl's experimental school are all borderliners, under assessment by the authorities to determine their futures. Either they will be integrated with 'normal' children (under the Darwinian test of the survival of the fittest) or they will be relegated to institutions for the mentally defective. Fully alert to their guinea-pig status in Biehl's experiment, the three children decide to deregulate the clockwork mechanism which entraps them in the irresistible grip of Time, here employed as a servant of the system. Their attempt to escape from the school and expose its oppressive mechanisms is at the heart of Hreg's searching, sensitive and enthralling novel. Both a chilling study of oppression in a school for disturbed children and, at another level, a probing study of the grip time has upon people, Borderliners demonstrates Peter Hreg's imagination and intelligence working at full capacity.
