Summary
Forgive me for saying this so bluntly and so early in the review of a first novel, but this is one of the weirdest books I have ever read. It's not that I fail to recognise the signs in the author's fictional landscape - German fantasy literature and the uneasy city of Berlin - but this is by no means an easy territory to enter. And it's not that Ida Hattemer-Higgins does not possess serious literary gifts; she has them in spadefuls. It's just that the plot is so dense and complicated that she seems to be inviting her readers to make the effort to get inside her head, or else be forever excluded.
Consider this for a story line. The year is 2002. An American woman finds herself plunging into the modern city after falling out of a nearby forest, filthy and dishevelled. Of course, she can remember nothing of what has befallen her. Her name is Margaret Taub but she could just as easily be Margaret Taeubner. No one seems to know, least of all her, and this where the real story begins.See the full content of this document
Extract
A Vision of Berlin Like No Other
A couple of years later and reality starts playing her false. Margaret works as a ...
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