Very atmospheric novel! I have to say, I quite liked it, though I'm gonna have a hard time explaining why. Do the 4 stars or my generally positive impression have any logical reason? No, not really. You can guess the plot twist early on, from page one basically (so none of what I'm going to tell you in this review is really spoilery), and there's not really much else happening plot-wise, the story on paper (haha) is rather bland: it's the meta context that makes it so good. It feels like it's rather a novel that grows on you from the background; it just has this special weird something to it. I like the discrepancy and woven interplay of dream and reality, and an unreliable narrator is already a plus by itself. There's this quote that I found really interesting and that sums up the essence of the novel pretty well (I'm quoting the English version here, though I read the book in its original language, German): "Why are you sorry for him? He's happy. He lives in a dream, and so his wealth is more secure than any other" Though I'd have translated it with "safe" instead of "secure", because I personally feel that dreams are seen as a safe space rather than secure locked-up-places in this novel. Unless we want to talk of the narrator as an voluntary prisoner, which may be fitting in some way, weren't it for my impression of him fleeing (instead of getting imprisoned! Though the difference between both may be a very philosophical topic in this case..) into a world where his dreams - in terms of wishes and desires - are fulfilled, where he can finally live in a world of his own choosing rather than having to deal with the sad truths of his own failures, his personal feelings of inadequacy and shortcomings. I generally like the idea of playing around with both dream and reality, leaving you unsure of what's what. Personally, in this book I've made my decision quite early on, and unlike the writer of the afterword I'm not so sure the novel is really all that much about your own choice of deciding on what's true (though truth is always a subjective matter, in this case it feels rather definite - so I have to disagree with the afterword's author saying that part of the novel's charm lies in how you can choose whom you want to believe). Instead it rather seems to be about the power of imagination, of repression, of wishful thinking to a point where your wishes actually govern your life, where reality is replaced by your longings, by your safe haven of a rewritten past where there are no losses and regrets: where your delusions win above everything, and you're the tragic hero of your own story, a story that you, only you and yourself have written. I love how this theme is featured in various ways in the book, by the main protagonist denying reality on so many levels that there's no end to the deepness of the rabbit hole, where the protagonist even denies happenings in the dream itself (the school teacher's warnings about the duplicity of the town's people are fruitless; even when the protagonist wants to leave he recognises that he can't because other parts of himself won't let him, and even though the protagonist thinks he's deceiving the Baron by not administering the drug to his patient, he's actually deceiving himself in a much bigger sense - isn't that just such a great irony? The protagonist deceives the baron - who is just another product of his mind and therefore himself - in something that is a deception of himself already!). A layered dream-world so to say, how can this not be fascinating? I'm so intrigued and the more I think about it, the more thought-out the novel seems to be. I'm not gonna lie, I can't get rid of the feeling that there's still lots of potential left; plus the story of unrequited love isn't really all that original. But I do appreciate the book for making me think and for grazing the surface of a very philosophical topic in real life: if you truly believe that something is real, are you really lying then? Where are really the boundaries between imagination and reality, if your perception of something isn't the same like of someone else, is it really already imagined then: where do delusions start and where do they end? And why wake up a dreamer that is happy, when awake they'd be suffering to a point where they don't even want to be awake? Shouldn't that choice of life be respected? So yes, I'm so glad I read this book, and it really inspires me to read more into philosophical matters again, something I've apparently abandoned for too long, else I wouldn't lust after everything that is even remotely touching the exterior of all matters deep and thoughtful. Definitely need to get my hands on more books like this one! (so if anyone has recommendations...hint hint)

Edit: My friend told me that "Muttergottesbrand", which is a drug (/byproduct of a parasite that can be found on wheat) used in the book to restore faith in God, is actually just the old word for LSD and how funny is that? Comparing the belief in God to the hallucinatory effects of a drug? Claiming that the only reason for people being so devout and pious in the past was them being high as hell? So cynical and brilliant! Hoooooly...something.

Edit2: I am very proud to say that I've almost only (with the exception of the "Between Boyfriends" book which we really do not want to talk about; let's pretend it exists in some alternative universe) read a bit more "intellectual" reading material recently, and that I now notice how much I used to neglect such books in favour of light and fast entertainment - and popularity, because if so many people read it right now, why shouldn't I? But you know what, fuck popular: just because it's "in" right now, doesn't mean it's good, as I've unfortunately found out way too often for my liking. While with going with books that I wouldn't have touched a year ago, I find that I'm really happy with everything I've read, especially since I feel like they really nourish my mind, which has apparently been starving before (for more).

Don't get me wrong, I will still read books only for entertainment reasons, especially since I get gifted most of my books and don't always have a choice there, but I will definitely try to vary my reading even more in the future. Not only genre-wise, I already did that more than enough; rather in terms of my personal preferences, which are wide enough already, but apparently there's still so much left to be discovered! Sticking to the same gets boring (I will never understand how so many people can only read YA and thrillers), and I feel like we should all challenge ourselves more, and give books a chance that may not exactly be to our acquired taste, but may be all the more worth it. After all, who says that our tastes are finite? Don't we say acquired taste for a reason? Just something that came to mind :)

PS: Though who are we kidding, my Tolino is full of love story novels and I can't wait to read them, so keep in mind that this is Kathi talking big so she convinces herself as well!