Border Songs

by Jim Lynch

Hardcover, 2009

Call number

FIC LYN

Collection

Publication

Knopf (2009), 304 pages

Description

Fiction. Literature. HTML:Set in the previously sleepy hinterlands straddling Washington state and British Columbia, Border Songs is the story of Brandon Vanderkool, six foot eight, frequently tongue-tied, severely dyslexic, and romantically inept. Passionate about bird-watching, Brandon has a hard time mustering enthusiasm for his new job as a Border Patrol agent guarding thirty miles of largely invisible boundary. But to everyone's surprise, he excels at catching illegal immigrants, and as drug runners, politicians, surveillance cameras, and a potential sweetheart flock to this scrap of land, Brandon is suddenly at the center of something much bigger than himself. A magnificent novel of birding, smuggling, farming and extraordinary love, Border Songs welcomes us to a changing community populated with some of the most memorable characters in recent fiction.… (more)

Media reviews

.... Lynch has written an anti-thriller thriller, not just a liberal critique of the war on terror but also a moving, optimistic rebuttal of our paranoia that encourages us to imagine, with Brandon, the possibility of flying over everything that divides us.

User reviews

LibraryThing member Nickelini
Brandon Vanderkool grew up on a dairy farm that skirts the Canadian border. All his life, he has regarded the people across the road--in another country--as his neighbours. Socially awkward, due in part to being 6'8" and extremely dyslexic, Brandon excels at art, is an avid birdwatcher, and notices
Show More
things that other people don't. Somehow he has fallen into a job as a border patrol agent, and surprises everyone by excelling at this too. With seemingly little effort, Brandon becomes a star employee by sweeping up human traffickers, possible terrorists, and a lot of drug smugglers.

Brandon is an endearing quirky character in a novel full of quirky endearing characters. There is his kind dad Norm, who is struggling to keep the family farm from collapsing; his wise mom who is showing signs of early-onset Alzheimers; his boyhood crush, Madeline, over on Zero Avenue, and her grumpy retired professor father, who likes to stand on his deck smoking pot and taunting his US neighbours. These are some of the characters that are seeing their lives change in a post-911 world where the US government jumps at every shadow that darkens the border.

This book is interesting, funny, smart--the whole package. Lynch obviously did his research well in exploring the subculture of life on the border. This is an area that I know fairly well (my dad's family dairy farm--which, like many of the dairy farms in the book, is now a raspberry farm--sits atop the Canadian side of the border), and the author gets the little details right. That always scores extra points from me. He also does an admirable job of weaving in facts and philosophy surrounding the multi-billion dollar marijuana industry (his journalism background shows here).

Recommended for: readers who like intelligent, interesting books with quirky characters.
Show Less
LibraryThing member nbmars
I loved Jim Lynch’s first novel, a coming of age story about a boy, a girl, and the creatures of the sea, called The Highest Tide. There is a passage in The Highest Tide in which a reporter asks the young protagonist Miles why it is that he’s always finding things no one else does: “Because
Show More
I’m always looking … and there are so many things to see.” The reporter continues: “So, maybe… when you found that squid, maybe the earth is trying to tell us something. And if so, what do you think it’s saying?” Miles hesitated and replied, “It’s probably saying, ‘Pay attention.’”

In Border Songs, Lynch again tackles similar themes with a boy who pays attention, a girl he loves, and the incredible diversity of Mother Nature's progeny. Although the main character, Brandon Vanderkool, is twenty-three, I would also consider this another coming of age book: Brandon is dyslexic and it is likely he has Asperger’s Syndrome; his development has been slower than other people's. In fact, he has much in common with the boy in Francisco Stork’s Marcelo in the Real World, who has Asperger's.

Brandon is 6’8” tall, socially and physically awkward, and he rocks back and forth and gets his words backwards when he is nervous (which is basically most of the time when he is not alone). He is incapable of “posing.” His dad runs a failing dairy farm, his mom has early Alzheimer’s, and they live on the ill-defined border between the U.S. and Canada in Blaine, at the top left corner of Washington State. The U.S./Canadian border is 4200 miles long, and much of it is “less delineated than the average cul-de-sac.” Brandon recently signed up with the Border Patrol to help out with expenses at home. It’s really his first time out “in the real world.” He was home schooled because of all the teasing, and doesn’t really know how to interact socially very well. But since he was young, he has been in love with his childhood friend right across the border, Madeline Rousseau.

Brandon turns out to be a huge success as a Border Patroller, because he pays attention to things others do not. He knows that if an owl screeches, or a heron takes flight, or birdsong changes, someone is moving through the area. He also goes to places other do not - looking for different birds, or constructing artwork out of nature. But it seems like he’s always interrupted; incursions across the border are constant. Would-be terrorists and vans full of human cargo make regular runs across his territory. And since the cultivation and use of marijuana is widespread on the Canadian side, there is also an especially large traffic in “buds” and money.

The narrative point of view moves back and forth across the border as well: sometimes we hear from Brandon or his father Norm, and sometimes from Madeline or her father Wayne. Madeline grows marijuana and is kept high and in the thrall of a shady dealer. Wayne uses marijuana for medicinal reasons; he has Multiple Sclerosis. He spends what he believes are his last days seeking to experience "greatness" by replicating the experimental processes followed by geniuses throughout history.

Dionne, Brandon’s earthy supervisor, and Sophie, Brandon’s nosy but charming neighbor, also take an occasional narrative lead. Dionne is funny, chunky, sexy, droll, sardonic, focused, and absolutely someone you want to go drinking with, even if you don’t drink. Sophie is everything to everyone, depending on what they want, but with the added humorous touch that both parties are aware of the dynamic.

Besides being with Madeline, Brandon is happiest when he experiences the rich variety of bird life by the Semiahmoo Bay [a habitat which supports more than 333 species and is called Canada’s most important birding area]. After one social occasion to which he was obliged to go, he thought:

"Talking was a letdown after the day he’d had. That morning he’d counted thirty-two species, including skinny oystercatchers, black-bellied plovers, western sandpipers and Pacific loons fresh from the north. The valley felt alive again. The night before he’d driven out to the old Sumas Customs House before sunset and waited thirty-five minutes before a lone Vaux’s swift swooped into view. After that slender bird disappeared into one of the two bulky chimneys, there was a pause before another dozen dove into the hole, followed by hundreds more, foraging the twilight for insects on their downward spiral, several hundred swifts forming a tall funnel that swirled into the same chimney like a genie returning to its bottle.”

Discussion: Lynch clearly loves the habitat of the bays of Washington State, and shares his passion for its beauty and abundance in his two books, The Highest Tide, and now Border Songs. His work also shows a wry and tender sympathy for young boys in love, and his other colorful characters are rendered with such care and affection that you can’t help but come to share Lynch’s obvious fondness for them.

The border issues, which weave all the people together in this book, are interesting and very timely. With so much focus in the news on the southern border, this book should serve as a corrective to the imbalance in our awareness of the geopolitical landscape.

Evaluation: If you have not picked up a book by Jim Lynch, you are missing out on a very talented author. His simple stories, with their quiet wit and absorbing and evocative descriptions of the inhabitants (both human and non) of the Northwest, are full of compassion for the human race, interesting facts about nature, and a subtle optimism that overtakes you by the end. I highly recommend both of the books discussed here!
Show Less
LibraryThing member Coyote99
Sometimes confusing account of lives on the Washington State/Canadian border. Marijuana and immigration problems beset a young Dyslexic Border Patrol Officer, Brandon Vanderkool, but it is his attraction to a beautiful but lost Canadian drug-runner that captured my sympathy. Beautifully written
Show More
character development; Brandon's personality and sensitivity make the book a fascinating read.
Show Less
LibraryThing member ccayne
I loved Brandon - he's so genuine. His gift of observation delivers many arrests for the border patrol and results in bewilderment for him. He's not sure that it's to anyone's benefit except perhaps his supervisors who are racking up more arrests than they dreamed of. The families along the
Show More
Washington/Canada border are all interesting - failed dairy farms, mcmansions and a thriving underground pot economy, not to mention the iimmigrants alogn the border. Brandon's own father and mother fight battles with illness and problems with the herd, including beloved Pearl. His childhood friend Madeline becomes involved in the pot production and her father trys to duplicate Einsteins experiments. All in all, Lynch has written a character rich quirky story of people who just don't quite fit in with mainstream Canada or America - I enjoyed every one of them.
Show Less
LibraryThing member BookConcierge
3.5 stars

Dyslexic Brandon Vanderkool has just joined the Border Patrol, but he would rather be working on his father’s dairy farm, exploring the woods, watching birds, and painting. Madeline Rousseau lives next door, just across the ditch that marks the US-Canadian border. Her father, Wayne, is
Show More
a retired professor with multiple sclerosis who uses cannabis medicinally. Brandon’s father, Norm, has a bum knee, a dairy farm in trouble, and a wife with early Alzheimer’s. Into this mix add a masseuse who collects all the local gossip, and a drug lord who is recruiting growers and smugglers.

There is a certain magical realism to this book, though I hesitate to categorize it as such. Brandon has unusual gifts – he’s either incredibly lucky or is getting tipped off, because he catches more drug smugglers, potential terrorists and illegal aliens in his first weeks on the job than any two other officers. This serves as a basic plot outline for the book, but it is much more than that. The reader begins to explore Brandon’s odd way of looking at the world, of interacting with it, of representing it in his art. Some people claim to have seen him “fly.” Brandon certainly seems more attuned to the animal kingdom, especially the birds that so fascinate him, than to the people he works with or even his own family.

Lynch is writing about more than just the border between the US and Canada. He is also writing about the borders between neighbors, between members of the same family, between men and women, between man and nature, between feeling secure and feeling threatened. His viewpoint keeps the reader off balance, not sure what to make of happenings in and around the poorly marked border between Washington and British Columbia. No one in this book is a skilled communicator, and much is left unsaid. Brandon, in particular, keeps most of his thoughts to himself, yet is the one person who functions with little thought to these many borders.

I liked the book but it’s difficult to categorize, and I’m not sure to whom I would recommend it.
Show Less
LibraryThing member detailmuse
Brandon Vanderkool’s colleagues on the US Border Patrol rightly call him a “s--- magnet.” A newbie agent on a 30-mile sector between Washington and British Columbia (where the international border is sometimes a mere ditch between neighbors’ yards), Brandon is freakishly tall, dyslexic and
Show More
probably autistic, an avid birder and artist -- with eyes that are “really, really wide open […] it’s like he expects something to happen at every moment, no matter where he is or what he’s doing.”

And happen it does -- from stumbling upon trucks full of illegal immigrants while searching for solitude, to finding contraband where he’s birding -- all to the reader’s amazement and amusement, but to Brandon’s utter dismay since his disabilities make the paperwork and notoriety a nightmare. But when he happens upon a stolen car with a Middle-Eastern driver, a trunkful of explosives, and a map to Seattle’s Space Needle, everything changes. The Feds descend, the Patrol gathers reinforcements, and local social and political stresses heat to a boil.

Still, it’s a comic boil, deepened by subplots involving a terrific set of secondary characters and eclectic townspeople. A thoughtful, engaging, and thoroughly entertaining read.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Gwendydd
The characters are what makes this book really enjoyable. The storyline is quirky and a bit absurd, but the characters are even quirkier, very interesting, and very engaging.
LibraryThing member SamSattler
I lost count of how many times the novel “Confederacy of Dunces” popped into my head as I read Jim Lynch’s “Border Songs,” but I do not mean anything even remotely negative about Border Songs when I say that. Lynch’s new novel has a certain “Confederacy of Dunces” vibe about it that
Show More
will appeal to fans of that memorable John Kennedy Toole novel of almost thirty years ago – and that is a good thing.

Unusual physical specimens, big men generally perceived by their friends and families to be of the hapless misfit variety, anchor both novels. And as Toole did for his “Dunces” hero, Lynch surrounds Brandon Vanderkool with quirky characters and plops the lot of them into a unique part of the country – two countries, actually – a little rural community living on both sides of the Washington/British Columbia border.

Brandon Vanderkool, six foot eight and so dyslexic that he speaks parts of his sentences backward in times of stress, is a loner whose father pushes him from the family’s small dairy farm into a job with the U.S. Border Patrol. Suddenly, Brandon is responsible for protecting the very border along which he has spent his entire life and, to everyone’s surprise, he turns out to be a natural. As a passionate bird watcher, he is so finely attuned to the comings and goings of the local bird population that he almost unconsciously senses when something is out of place. That sense of place allows Brandon to become one of the stars of the Border Patrol, a one-man wrecking crew when it comes to stopping illegal aliens and pot from crossing the border from the Canadian side. Brandon’s duties with the Border Patrol, though, bring him into daily contact with people he has known all his life, many of whom who still ridicule him out of habit and find it difficult to accept his new position of authority despite all his success.

“Border Songs” is a character driven novel and Jim Lynch has populated his little international community with some good ones. Brandon’s father, Norm, whose dairy herd is desperately ill, is shocked and even a little embarrassed by all the attention Brandon is getting around town. Norm, by nature a dreamer and a worrier, is also terrified at how rapidly Brandon’s good-natured mother is losing her memory. Madeline Rousseau, to whom Brandon still imagines he has a special bond, grew up within sight of Brandon’s house but on the Canadian side of the ditch separating the two countries. Now, though, she works for a major pot smuggler and she and Brandon are on different sides of the border in more than one sense.

Madeline’s father, a retired professor, stays busy these days yelling anti-American slogans across the ditch at Norm and trying to replicate great inventions of the past by meticulously recreating the original step-by-step research of the actual inventors. Then there is Sophie, the newly arrived masseuse and gossip collector who video tapes interviews with willing customers and seems to be the only person on either side of the border who has the big picture.

“Border Songs” is a comic look at life on an international border, in this case, a border that is nothing more than a drainage ditch serving the two countries it divides. It is a clear reminder that, while borders are important and necessary, their effects are sometimes absurd, especially when seen through the eyes of those who live so near them.

Rated at: 4.0
Show Less
LibraryThing member LynnB
This is a wonderful, funny, touching story about Brandon Vanderkool, a young, severely dsylexic Border Patrol officer in Washington state. Brandon sees the world differently from most people and his dsylexia makes speaking and understanding others a challenge at times.

Accompanying Brandon in this
Show More
story of cross-border drug smuggling, illegal migration and friendships, are Canadian and American families living with various illnesses, economic challenges and personal relationships.

Brandon's parents (Norm and Jeannette) are running a struggling dairy farm and dealing with Jeannette's memory loss. Brandon's friend Madeleine Rousseau is involved in drug smuggling and struggling to keep her life on an even keel. They, and all the other characters along the border, are well drawn and add to the richness of this story.
Show Less
LibraryThing member CasualFriday
I was hesitant to review this title, because I listened to it rather than read it, and I'm afraid my negative reaction was influenced by a dreadful, loud, hectoring narrator, like Andy Rooney in a bad mood. Possibly in print, I would have been charmed by Brandon, a dyslexic gentle giant, and I
Show More
would have been amused by the acerbic former professor Wayne Russo and I would have had empathy for struggling farmer Norm. But as it was (and tormented by that irritating voice) I found the story too quirky by half and I just wanted it to be over.
Show Less
LibraryThing member athiker52
Great characters. I loved the ending
LibraryThing member jvandehy
I liked this book. The main character, Brandon, is a savant, which gives the story an odd gait. Border Songs is short stories of other interesting characters lightly swirled around Brandon. The author doesn't take the premise of the story too seriously, and the reader doesn't either.
LibraryThing member MelissaMcB
A beautifully written story with an interesting cast of characters. The setting along the Washington/Canada border was one I hadn't come across before. I really enjoyed this book and will definitely pick up his other one soon.
LibraryThing member Lyndatrue
It was okay. The main character wasn't terribly real, or realistic, but some of the description of the area was interesting enough that I kept reading anyway. I've read worse.
LibraryThing member nmele
I live where this novel is set, so my awareness of the places and even some of the characters in it may have biased me, so I only gave it 4 starts to compensate for any bias. This is a rare gem, a comedy told in such lyrical prose that I doubt the northern stretches of Whatcom County will ever be
Show More
better immortalized.
Show Less
LibraryThing member RHLibrary
Marcia Lane Purcell:
Even though the Advance Reading Copy (ARC) is designed to make you get a jump on the publication of the book itself - to get you to talk about the book - to spread the good word -- in general, help to SELL the book -- there are very few ARCs that I can remember that literally
Show More
start off with four solid pages of praise. This praise is not all in-house either. Most of it comes from bookstore staff across the country and contains phrases like, "a truly wonderful and thoughtful novel," "in a class by itself," "beautifully rendered scenes," "curious, brilliant, often visionary characters," and lest I built it up TOO much, I'll close the quotes with this one: "I savored every chapter, every character, every lovely sentence, every plot twist and turn. It is a superbly crafted novel…" Brandon Vanderkool is the heart and soul of this story. At 6'8" and extremely dyslexic, he doesn't seem a likely choice to take center stage, and he does have a lot of competition from the assortment of characters populating this novel. I won't even attempt to describe the plot. Suffice it to say that there's a lot going on around the U.S./Canadian border in the Pacific Northwest and Brandon is pushed by his father into the very thick of it when he joins the Border Patrol. Also there is a perfect marriage between book and cover. Kudos to the selection of Walton Ford's Falling Bough (2008) as the painting which draws you into the book.
Show Less
LibraryThing member keneumey
Members of my book group found the writing style strange, but I liked it. The characters are engaging and quirky, and the situations, believe it or not, are realistic. My problem with the book is that the author (a former journalist) seems to have interviewed locals and strung together
Show More
fictionalized versions of news reports and called it a novel. What frustrates me the most is that there are several times within the story when something major is about to happen...and then it doesn't happen. I was left wondering what was the point of the whole thing.
Show Less
LibraryThing member kimberwolf
Beautiful, top-notch writing. Jim Lynch is becoming a favorite author.
LibraryThing member mahsdad
A fun satirical story about life on the border, the NORTHERN border. Brandon is a extremely tall dyslexic who is obsessed with art and birds. To get away from his family's dairy farm, get gets on the Border Patrol. Working primarily to capture illegal aliens and drug runners, he is somewhat
Show More
preternaturally good at his job. Written in 2009, but given Canada's legalization of marijuana, it is a very "current" book. Really funny and worth the time.

"Everyone knows a CIA lab in Laos refined heroin in the seventies," Duval began, as if answering a question. "Then they used Noriega, of course, to trade guns for coke with the Contras in the eighties. Remember that? And in the nineties, it's undisputed that the agency supplied the camels to haul opium to labs along the Afghan-Paki order. So why would the U.S. allow the legalization of cannabis when it knows it would forfeit its ability to manipulate the world?"
Show Less
LibraryThing member m.belljackson
What a wild ride as readers fly with Brandon Vanderkool as he evolves into a magnet crime solver as a US Border Patrol!

Interwoven between British Columbia and the state of Washington
is his love for birds, painting, family and a desire for a partner who can appreciate his Dyslexian reactions.
LibraryThing member dtn620
As the four stars implies, I liked this book. In fact I really liked this book, but this year I am getting tougher on what gets a full five stars. In years past this book and his most recent would have been five stars (what a reviewer cop-out).

This book is the story of the U.S. Canadian border in
Show More
WA state, it is a story of the people that live there, but ultimately it is the story of Brandon Vanderkool, how he interacts with the world and how the world interacts with him. Brandon is a huge (6'8"), dyslexic, in-tuned man who never quite fit in. He is wonder for those around him, a natural as a border patrol agent, and has a serious connection to the natural world. I found myself also struck by wonder by this larger than life (metaphorically and literally) character.

I think it would be fair to think of him as the hub of the wheel that makes up this story. What really fascinated me though are the spokes of that wheel, the individuals living along the border, each with their own set of problems and concerns, their lives so real and important. It is their story and their connections to Brandon that really bring the whole thing to life.

Not only is this is a book worth reading, it's a book I'll likely reread in a couple of years.
Show Less
LibraryThing member DeltaQueen50
Border Songs by Jim Lynch is set in and around Blaine, Washington, a town right on the U.S./Canada border. Running eastwards from Blaine, the border between the two countries is very open, no fences no wires, simply a few markers and a shallow ditch. On the Canadian side runs Zero Avenue and on the
Show More
American, Boundary Road. This border is a symbol of the trust and friendship that exists between the United States and Canada.

The author peoples his book with characters that are as unique as this open border. First and foremost, on the American side, we meet newly appointed border guard, 6’8” dyslexic Brandon Vanderkool who relates to animals and birds but has great difficulty with people. Brandon is in love with Canadian pothead Madeline Rousseau who has been running wild since her mother’s death, has started growing marijuana indoors. Between the Border Patrol and the smugglers/growers lie the regular inhabitants, the dairy farmers, retirees and property owners, many who make money on the side by turning a blind eye to strangers crossing their land during the night.

While there is plenty of action in this story what with arresting marijuana smugglers, suspected terrorists and vanloads of foreign prostitutes, it is really a wry, humorous story about our differences and similarities. And although the plot sort of fizzles out, the author’s charming and quirky characters engage the reader and make Border Songs an enjoyable portrait of life on the “border”.
Show Less

Awards

Dublin Literary Award (Longlist — 2011)
Washington State Book Award (Winner — Fiction — 2010)

Pages

304

ISBN

030727117X / 9780307271174
Page: 0.3616 seconds