BOOK REVIEW: The Berlin Wall by David Leo Rice
An encroaching coastline of mountains and ice decimates the surrounding border of Europe. No one is sure what's causing it. Germany is at the center of these changes. Political upheaval is everywhere. Internet personalities vie for support from the citizens. One of the more popular political hopefuls claims to be an actual inhabitant of Atlantis. The current Chancellor is trying to hold onto her position. Hell is breaking loose caused by factions led by the mass murderer Anders Breivik. He wants a return to the mission of the third reich. He wants the final final solution fulfilled.
Three main characters traverse this landscape with their pov's in alternating sections.
Gyorgy is an easily impressionable politically right leaning 19 year old looking for his place in society. The second pov is from Ute, a piece of the living wall. She roams the world-at-large looking for other disparate sections of the Berlin Wall. The wall was an actual living being. Its pieces are lost, looking for one another to be united again. Our third character is Anika, a professor and author with ties to the upper class and the art world of Berlin. She is charged with writing a book that captures the perfect example of Germany in an idyllic mode under fascist rule.
They all are navigating a world being turned inside out by a fascist surge. Anders Breivik's cult is worshipping an altar in the Black Forest. The trees are on fire. The sky is being blocked by enormous swaths of loose skin. The alien skin covers most of the land. An entire German town exists eternally in perpetual Sunday. Ute of the living wall makes love and receives messages through the exposed wires that jut out of her body. She uses these wires to intertwine with fellow living wall fragments to reconnect themselves. Gyorgy is channeling an ancient Hungarian warrior that does battle while adorning wolf skins. He's looking to destroy Breivik and his army. A war to find out which flavor of authoritarian rule will dominate. Unfortunately, Gyorgy is pregnant with Breivik's spawn of immortal Atlanteans. They are being bred to take over the world.
And there are psychic body sized eggs occupied by evil men.
This all understandably takes place in 2020.
There are books you read that float along, give you a nice tale about life and how we live it. There are other books that want to rip your mind apart, swallow you whole, and spit your chewed up carcass out. David Leo Rice uses his skill at creating whole new existences to terrify and inspire his readers. A nightmare of unending fascist existences folding in on themselves. Told in a way that can only be justifiably demonstrated in its original form. This book will envelop you. Take over your life for the duration of the reading experience. Make you question whether or not what you're reading is actually happening on the page. It is at times disgusting. At times it is pastoral. Some of the most impressive prose I've ever read exists here. It is writing that is of this time and no other before it. Years from now readers will discover this book and think it a milestone. I haven't read all of the books in existence or even a percentage of them but, I think, this is one of the most original pieces of fiction ever written. Equal parts Philip K Dick, William S Burroughs, David Cronenberg, Robert Anton Wilson. An immense work that stands alone. It is a mythical island covered in skin with roving concrete human art objects. It is men, impregnated with evil, searching to create the perfectly awful society. It is the enslavement of all those that are deemed weak and expendable. I think we can all relate.
