Pat Barker
Border Crossing is a novel written by English author Pat Barker, and first published in 2001. The novel explores the controversial issue of children who have committed murder, investigating the aftermath of a ten-year-old-boy's suffocation of an elderly woman.
About Danny
- "You didn't know who or what he was."
- "Danny didn't do feelings."
- "He was an arrogant little bastard."
- "The forensic evidence for Danny's guilt was overwhelming, but he was a good liar."
- "Danny was a bottomless pit. He wanted other people to fill him, only in the process the other people ended up drained."
- "I think he hated anything he couldn't control."
- "...the horror of the images impossible to connect with the child he'd just left."
- "I thought he was one of the most dangerous boys we've ever had through the school." (Mrs. Greene)
Tom and Lauren's Marriage
- "But [Tom] was used to switching off, to living his life in separate compartments."
- "[Tom] denies [Lauren] his attention in memory, as he did in life."
Crossing Borders
- "It was extraordinarily distracting: this feeling of a pivotal moment in his own life being played out in front of an uninvited audience."
- "...Tom was aware of a line being crossed."
- "[Danny] was very, very good at getting people to step across that invisible border. Lambs to the slaughter."
Death
- "You wring a chicken's neck, you don't expect to find it running round the yard next morning, do you?" (Danny)
- "Do you think it's different, killing a rabbit and killing a person?"
Mist/Fog
- "They'd awoken that morning to a curious stillness. Clouds sagged over the river, and there was mist like sweat over the mudflats."
- "[Tom] was less than halfway across the causeway when the mist thickened."
Water/Drowning
- "A second later, the water enclosed him in a coffin of ice."
Smoke/Fire
- "The fired burnt furiously, piled high with logs. Danny had dragged the log basket onto the hearth rug and was kneeling beside it, a log in each hand, watching the fire burn."
- "A rasp and flare as [Danny] struck the match. A doubled reflection of the flame appeared in his eyes, whose pupils had not contracted, as one would have expected, but grown large, as if starved for light."
- "Danny's face was veiled in smoke."
Birth/Rebirth
- "The boy [Danny] looked like a baby: purple faced, wet hair, that drowned look of a newborn, cast up on to its mother's suddenly creased and spongy belly."
- "[Lauren's] eyes were glazed, inward-looking. Like labour, Tom thought, the irony as sour as the mud on his tongue."
Redemption
- "Do you think confession's the only route to redemption?"
- "You see the real question is: can people change?"
