Geist Fleisch by Christian Baines – A Book Review

When Callum travels from Nottingham to Berlin, his only hope is to find himself.

Well, if he were being completely honest, he hopes to find himself in the arms of a German man. He’s heard tell that the men in Germany are a little bit freer and more liberal than the ones in Nottingham. They are not afraid to embrace the taboo of being gay.

Thankfully, his cousin Anne has given him houseroom and support. She knows well what it’s like to be different in a world that would have you behave a certain way. Callum feels a certain kind of freedom in Germany, even though there are still soldiers of the third Reich walking the streets.

When Anne takes him to a lesbian bar, Callum wishes only to drink away his sorrows and celebrate the fact that he’s around people like him. He goes to the water closet to relieve himself and is astounded when another man is within, promising Callum the wonders that he has been seeking since leaving the safety of Nottingham. He follows the man back out into the bar and realizes that it’s somehow turned itself into a completely different establishment.

He goes further into the bar, looking for his cousin, and that’s when he realizes that the bar is filled with men. They are all dancing and drinking together, with no shame for showing their affection so openly in a public establishment. Callum thinks that he has entered some kind of dream when he meets Max. The attraction is instant and, though they are quite taken with each other, Callum can’t help but wonder what caused the scars the mar Max’s complexion.

When he next goes to the washroom, Callum can’t wait to resume his conversation with Max, but the bar that he had been in first has rematerialized and Max is nowhere to be seen. He wonders if it was all a dream. Soon however, Callum is drawn into a world filled with shadows and terrible beings that only exist in fairy tales.

He learns that the darkness hides more than shame. It hides who he is ready to become. With thoughts of keeping Max safe and surviving the ordeal in front of him, will Callum prevail, or will the shadows of the flesh take him, too?

In a word, Geist Fleisch is incredible. It blurs genres. It’s a little bit of everything. It’s part wartime tale, part ghost story, part story of personal growth and Christian Baines does such a skillful job of interweaving all the different storylines to make this book a genre all its own.

The world building is top notch. He brings to life the time of the second world war and Berlin so well, it’s like I was there. I could hear the noises in the streets, feel the wisp of cold fog at night. What’s more, Baines has painted a real and true version of Germany but revealed a world underneath its surfaces that you would swear really existed. It all feels so real and so urgent like it would have been during that time in history.

I walked into this book expecting a jolly romp through Berlin and the treasures that were waiting to be found. What I found instead was a book that I related to so strongly about man going through an awakening, desperate to find himself in world that chose not to understand him and the personal growth that can only happen when you are fighting for something you love. The historical parts of Geist Fleisch do not shy away from what life was like for homosexuals during that time and it makes the story all the more amazing because it just feels so darn real.

It was a pleasure to watch Callum grow as a person and comes into his own light. I loved the fact that I was never able to guess what was coming or what was going happen. Baines did an excellent job of keeping me on my toes the entire way through Geist Fleisch. It defies and does away with every stereotype and trope and instead gives us something more: a novel about the powers of love in a war-torn world and that, if you look out of the corners of your eyes, you might see where you truly belong.