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Skeletons at the Feast Review
Among the group is eighteen-year-old Anna Emmerich, the daughter of Prussian aristocrats. There is her lover, Callum Finella, a twenty-year-old Scottish prisoner of war who was brought from the stalag to her family’s farm as forced labor. And there is a twenty-six-year-old Wehrmacht corporal, who the pair know as Manfred–who is, in reality, Uri Singer, a Jew from Germany who managed to escape a train bound for Auschwitz. As they work their way west, they encounter a countryside ravaged by war. Their flight will test both Anna’s and Callum’s love, as well as their friendship with Manfred–assuming any of them even survive. Perhaps not since The English Patient has a novel so deftly captured both the power and poignancy of romance and the terror and tragedy of war. Skillfully portraying the flesh and blood of history, Chris Bohjalian has crafted a rich tapestry that puts a face on one of the twentieth century’s greatest tragedies–while creating, perhaps, a masterpiece that will haunt readers for generations. User Submitted Skeletons at the Feast ReviewsOctober 6, 2008 Moving and Masterful Storytelling "Let's face it: these days, you and I - our families, our world - are nothing more than skeletons at the feast anyway." These are the words of Karl Emmerich, a disillusioned aristocratic farmer whose foolish optimism has him believing that his societal standing will ultimately save him from the brutality of war, refusing to leave his home while all others are evacuating in an effort to escape certain death. His stubbornness would ultimately seal his fate, a fate that the innocent and guilty alike meet time and again in Chris Bohjalian's best-selling twelfth novel "Skeletons At The Feast". The book examines the ultimate toll of war through different perspectives during the last turbulent months of World War II in Germany and Poland, alternating between three vastly different scenarios. The first is the Emmerichs, a family of six Prussian aristocrats. Rolf, the patriarch, and Mutti, his wife, are staunch canonists for their führer and members of the Nazi party. They own a prosperous farm in Kaminheim in East Prussia but they abandon it all in the wintry beginnings of 1945 as the Red Army begins to overtake Germany. While Mutti, her daughter Anna, her son Theo and Callum Finella, a Scottish POW, head for the safety and impregnability of American and British lines, Rolf and his teenage son Helmut answer the call of aid to their country, meeting the Russians head on as they push their way through the countryside, raping, pillaging and murdering all the way. The point of interest in this scenario lies mostly on the romance between 18-year old Anna and Callum, who met while Callum was forced to work on the farm with other POWs before their self-imposed evacuation. All the while that Anna and her family travel cross-country, the distant echoes of artillery fire can be heard and their small band has much to fear; the Nazis will kill them for their treasonous harboring of an Ally and the Russians will kill them simply for who they are. The second is Uri Singer, a Jew on the run after having jumped a train bound for Auschwitz. In order to conceal his true identity, he commandeers a German military uniform and masquerades as a Nazi officer, all the while taking advantage of his supreme disguise and executing German soldiers and SS officers to sate his rage against the dire effects of the Holocaust. The third is Cecile Fournier, a French Jew being worked to death in a labor camp. Bohjalian puts the reader right in there with her, bringing about harsh imaginings of malnourished physiques from slow and agonizing starvation, teeth rotting and falling out from poor hygiene and vitamin deficiencies, and clothes and shoes threadbare and falling apart from constant wear (not to mention the stains from loss of bowel control due to lax sphincter muscles, a side effect of rapid and extreme weight loss). Rather than fret on her own struggle to survive, Cecile instead focuses her energy and attentions on Jeanne, a fellow prisoner in the camp who consistently gives in to the hopelessness of the situation. All the while that they endlessly toil, they watch the Nazis beat and randomly shoot other prisoners and in one horrific instance, wheel two wagonloads of severely exhausted prisoners into raging bonfires, burning them alive. No expense is spared in illustrating the barbarity of the Nazis and the reader will feel Cecile's wrenching despair as well as the intense rage against her torturers. All of the above characters eventually cross paths towards the end of the story, their fateful encounter shaping a tragic climax along with a bittersweet ending. The only inexplicable element of the novel's denouement is a minor character's mysterious placement in Israel as a soldier in the last chapter, an event for which the reasons and/or circumstances are never expounded upon. Bohjalian's story is yet again inspired by real people and/or events, the journey of the Emmerichs derived from the diary of Eva Henatsch, grandmother of Bohjalian's close friends Gerd and Laura Krahn. Henatsch was a beet farmer in East Prussia before heading west with her family at the end of the war to escape the Soviets, a harrowing journey that she documented in impressive detail within her diary which spanned from 1920 through 1945. He also pulled from other amazing true stories, in particular from his neighbor Gizela Neumann, a Holocaust survivor (he attributes much of those stories to the character of Cecile). Bottom line: "Skeletons At the Feast" proves that Bohjalian ascends to greater heights with each novel he publishes, his masterful storytelling placing him in the highest category of great authors of American fiction. Powerful and heartbreaking to the last, it will move you to read true accounts of the hardships of war as well as other amazing against-the-odds survival stories. September 16, 2008 A lovely piece of work from an excellent story teller One of my favorite authors. Bohjalian is usually writing about his native and obviously beloved upstate area of VT/NH. This time he had to do some major research as he writes about the Holocaust and the families who were a part of the war. His characters are well defined and the reader can sympathize with a variety of reasons for actions taken during the war. However, I do not think this is one of his best books, but it is extremely interesting and well written, as usual. I believe it should sell well. I also believe it is the kind of novel whereby the reader keeps going and cannot stop well into the wee hours of the night. While I listened to it on audio and got an even better perspective, I also read a part of it and felt as though it was excellent. I could see it as a film as well. (Perhaps Scarlet Johanson as the farmer's daughter?) An excellent piece of fiction for any reader. September 15, 2008 Preposterous premises Based on his previous works which I enjoyed immensely I was expecting yet another superb novel but what I got instead was more akin to a historical romance and a rather farfetched one at that. A Prussian Junker who doesn't notice right under his nose that his teenage daughter has taken as a lover a Scottish POW sent to work as a laborer on their farm?! Said Prussian Junker and his son abandon his wife, daughter and youngest son in the care of the Scottish POW while escaping to the West so they can do the noble thing and go back to suicidally fight the advancing Red Army?! A Jewish man escapes from a train to Auschwitz, beats two SS men to death with a poker, and then dons one of their uniforms and identity to go travelling around the Third Reich undetected and unmolested by the most efficient secret police organization in the world at that time?! I had to give up and put it down after 75 pages. September 2, 2008 Awesome!! This book was really good. It was suspensful, sad, powerful and all around great. Skeletons at the Feast truly established the very being of human nature and the importance of treating people with kindness, respect and love. I recommend this to anyone who wants a great thrilling read. August 23, 2008 Skeleton's at the Feast I am in the middle of reading this wonderful book. Again Chris Bohjalian has written a book that one cannot put down. The characters are rich, the history amazing. It certainly makes one think about what it was like to live through this war in this part of the world. He captures the horror, the anguish and the will to survive. I would highly recommend this book along with anything else that Chris has written. July 31, 2008 great read Loved the different theme of this book compared to Bohjalian's other books. Great history combined with an amazing love story made it a page turner. July 29, 2008 Filled with haunting characters one comes to care about To be honest, this is my first Bohjalian book. I was interested in the theme dealing with World War Two and the Holocaust, a special interest of mine. I was pleasantly surprised at Mr Bohjalian's ability to capture the sense of those horrific times and bring something new to the table. The book basically deals with a mish-mash of people during the last days of World War Two - there is the 18-year-old daughter of a staunch Nazi supporter, her mother, younger brother; a Scottish POW; a German Jew disguised as a Nazi who escapes from a cattle train bound for Auschwitz and myriad others. Bohjalian defines these characters so well that I truly came to care about them. What was unique to me in reading this novel was the grey area between right and wrong - in times of war, what exactly is right and wrong, moral and immoral? Uri the German Jew kills in order that he may survive, and is that wrong? We have good Germans and utterly deplorable ones, and many other memorable characters that make us truly ponder on the effects of war on the human psyche. With its moral ambiguities and complex characters, this makes for a troubling yet riveting read and I look forward to getting acquianted with Mr Bohjalian's other works. July 28, 2008 I loved It! I ordered Skeletons at the Feast without any knowledge of the topic. I just knew that anything written bt Chris Bohjalian would be special and this was no exception. His ability to capture the personalities of the characters is astounding,especially the women. I couldn't put it down. I do not usually read novels about the Holocaust because it is too disturbing but this one approached the time totally differently. I liked hearing the different voices especially those of the Prussian family. Keep the books coming, Chris! July 23, 2008 Don't Rely on the Sample If you are purchasing this for Kindle (as I did) don't let the sample fool you. I got the sample and was terribly disappointed. It was slow moving, verbose and generally written like old English prose. Out of town one weekend with nothing to read, I went ahead and purchased the novel (since it was the easiest link on my Kindle at the time) and ended up reading it all in one sitting. After the first slow, dreary chapters, the story truly picked up pace and speed and I found myself completely engrossed in the story. The trials and tribulations of the fallen aristocratic farm family was sad and as their eyes were opened to the atrocities of war, the story became an absolutely riveting tale. I've never read anything by this author prior but will certainly try to do so in the future. July 17, 2008 Haunting I greatly admired Bohjalian's novels Midwives and The Double Bind. He has a very literary style and I find his writing to be very lyrical and beautiful, not to mention that his subject matter is innovative and thought-provoking. When I heard that he had a new novel coming, I knew immediately that I wanted to read it. Though the two previous Bohjalian novels I had read dealt with quite diverse subject matter, this novel still came as a surprise. For as well as Bohjalian writes contemporary fiction, though, this work of historical fiction is even stronger. It's obvious that he did a great deal of research on the subject and his imagery is extremely vivid and graphic to the point that it is, at times, hard to read. This is not to say that the violence is gratuitous because it isn't. Bohjalian writes these scenes very matter-of-factly, which gives them all the more impact. Though this novel is fictional, what the characters face is based on facts and it is painful to imagine experiencing the things his characters experience. Set in the waning days of World War II, Bohjalian tells the novel from several points of view. On one hand is the Emmerich family, landed gentry who are caught up in the Nazi regime. Though not entirely comfortable with this regime, the family is largely ignorant of the crimes against humanity being perpetrated by it. Bohjalian does an excellent job of portraying what many typical German citizens of the time probably experienced. It is very powerful to see how, once knowledge dawns, the characters begin to realize that the monumental crimes committed will long be their homeland's legacy. The novel also introduces us to Callum, a Scottish POW who is sent to work the Emmerich family farm. His relationship with the family is complex. It would have been easy for him to classify them as heartless Nazis but he sees what type of people they are and how they have blindly trusted their leaders. Still, Callum is perhaps the least developed of all the characters. The characters that resonated the most for me were that of Cecile and Uri. A Jewish woman captured in her homeland of France, Cecile is sent to a forced labor camp. Bohjalian provides many stark details of the deprivations and torture of these women as they labor and then march, their German tormentors leading them away from the invading Russian army. Uri is also a Jew but has spent the last two years changing his identity multiple times. In order to survive, he passes himself off as various German officers and even as a Russian. Uri's incredulity at the depth of the Nazis' hatred for the Jews resonates strongly and it is every bit as baffling for the reader to understand why, when faced with certain defeat, the Nazis continued to expend a lot of time and effort in their quest to exterminate an entire race of people. Perhaps the strongest point of the novel is that all of Bohjalian's characters suffer. In fact, suffering is presented as a universal human condition and none of his characters are exempt, no matter their nationality or religious affiliation. It is indisputable that some suffer more than others but what is most striking about the novel is what it has to say about the human capacity for brutality against other humans--and the human capacity for love. The novel also contains a theme that could be called karma, for past actions come to haunt each of the characters in very serious ways. This is a stellar novel from a very gifted writer, a writer who may just be one of the most talented American authors alive today. It is a profound, moving, and troubling novel that shows only too well how history does, in fact, repeat itself. One need only look at news of what is happening in the Sudan for proof. For more Skeletons at the Feast reviews click here.
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