Border Songs
The Age
Saturday August 8, 2009
Border Songs Jim Lynch Bloomsbury, $32.99 MANY borders are porous. The US-Canadian border leaks like a sieve, provoking paranoia in Washington about drug traffickers, Islamist terrorists and so on. Jim Lynch's Border Songs is set in a sleepy country town dragged unwillingly into the surveillance age. Brandon Vanderkool stands 203 centimetres and suffers severe dyslexia, but his attunement to the surrounding nature makes him a crack member of the border patrol. Unfortunately, he falls in love with Madeline, a neighbouring gardener who €” unbeknown to Brandon €” has become increasingly implicated in a marijuana-smuggling syndicate. An acutely sketched supporting cast fills out the novel €” Brandon's father, a salt-of-the-earth dairy farmer whose wife is succumbing to dementia; and Madeline's father, an eccentric firebrand who re-creates famous inventions in his basement. Lynch writes with great humour and humanity, marshalling an unlikely alliance of romantic comedy and political satire.
© 2009 The Age