Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1094167 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

Customer Reviews

Skeletons At The Feast
In Chris Bohjalian's `Skeletons at the Feast' the war is a huge panoramic backdrop to the novel. This isn't just a book where the war is going on but we don't see much of it bar the odd bomb, here we have the full scale of the horrific events that World War II caused and through the characters we also see it from many different sides.

The main plot runs following 18 year old German Anna Emmerich as she, and her Scottish lover and prisoner of war Callum, take her mother and brother across Germany to get behind the American or British lines and to safety. Their tale is a harrowing one being separated from Anna's elder brother and father as well as their home and belongings from the start. We also follow the story of Uri a Jew who has managed to escape a train to the concentration camps and is stealing the costumes and identity of dead German soldiers as he goes. There is also the tale of Cecile who isn't as lucky and is stuck inside a concentration camp, from all these characters you get to see all the sides of the war.

However there is some liberal use of (what I call Philippa Gregory Complex) hindsight in this novel with parts of the story, such as Anna's mother Mutti who starts the book as a complete Hitler lover becoming worried her country `will be forever remembered for all it did wrong in history'. Though I can understand why an author would want to use the power of hindsight in this case it felt a little forced. Having gotten that small little issue out of the way I have to say I really enjoyed the book, I wouldn't have picked it up in the book shop but I certainly don't regret reading it. Might be a good one for book groups?

"A self-loathing would be her companion and cause her to walk with a distracted, disconsolate gaze."
Expertly interlocking all of the blood and anarchy of the 2nd World War with the very personal experiences of his main protagonists, Chris Bohjalian has written a hellish account of the brutalities inflicted on both Jews and Germans and anyone else who unwittingly gets caught up in the chaos of the battlefield. Although somewhat of a departure for Bohjalian who has spent much of his writing career dealing with social issues on the home front, here he brings to life with an almost cinematic furor, the waning months of the Nazi empire even as he hones in on one German family who have become unintentionally swept up in the tide of history.

The aristocratic Emmerichs have lived a privileged life on their estate in East Prussia, always resenting the fact that their land was succeeded to the Poles. Hitler had certainly changed this, with the family matriarch Irmgard "Mutti" venerating Germany's new leader for liberating them from Polish governance. But now with the Reich threatening to collapse around them and with the Russians, considered the juggarnaught of barbarians, advancing from the East, this family is forced to flea, embarking on a desperate trek across the whole of the Reich in order to reach the presumed safety of the British or the American lines.

Patriarch Rolf Emmerich and eldest son Helmut leave to join the Germans, even as Helmet is too young and brash to understand for certain that he might die if he joins the fight against the Russians. Staying behind to make the trek is the eighteen-year-old Anna who together with Mutti and the younger brother Leo is left in the care of the twenty-year old POW, a giant Scotsman, by the name of Callum Finella, sent to the Emmerich family estate from the prison camp just outside of Thorn to help with the harvest.

Although Rolf and Helmut disapprove of Callum's affair with the naïve young Anna, they hope that the Scottish Paratrooper will be their goodwill ambassador, their currency and their proof that they're not "your run of the mill Nazis." As Anna, Mutti Leo and Callum embark on their dangerous march, ducking and weaving as they hear the shriek of yet another approaching Soviet shell, their travail is tempered by the lovely Mutti, a sweet lady with fortitude and courage who shoulders much of the emotional burden of their plight.

Meanwhile, the war effort goes on, and even with the Russians approaching, the killing in the concentration camps moves ahead at full steam along with the accompanying evacuations from the Jewish enclaves in the towns deep in Eastern Poland. The young Jew Uri Singer is deported for a concentration camp, spending nearly three days in a cattle car before he escapes. Determined to find his sister, he hurls himself along with a slop bucket out the door on one balmy night when the opportunity suddenly presents itself.

Perhaps the most heart-wrenching story in this tale of survival is the two young French Jewish girls, Cecilia and her friend Jeanne. Considered to be expendable slave labor they are marched from their concentration camp, desperately trying to avoid a certain death, all the while struggling to find a memory they could share that no one would associate with want and sadness and loss. Along with the other girls, they spend much of their lives on the edge, terrified of the German guards who could at any moment fire a shot into the back of anyone's skull because a prisoner could no longer stand.

Metaphorically all these characters are like skeletons heading towards their feast, trapped in their battle for survival even as the pace of death never seems to slow. Author Chris Bohjalian gives us a real sense of all the death and destruction, the sounds of screams and the missiles and the diving airplanes, while also giving us a truly cinematic picture of the rivers of refugees heading West, old people young children and crippled soldiers, surging forward with all of their household possessions in ramshackle carts.

Each character carries his or her share of burdens: Callum who accompanies the Emmerichs always fears he will simply be shot on the spot as an escaped POW; Uri is determined to act out one final repayment for the deaths he had witnessed in the cattle car and the myriad afflictions and indignities he had endured for about as long as he could remember; and Anna is torn between what is wrong, the reality that her Callum is a prisoner, and that she's violating her family's trust by inviting him into her house - and her bed.

This novel is a blinding testimony to all the cruelty and barbarism during these years, but what makes this story so unique is its haunting perspective of telling the story from the distinctively German point of view, embedding the War deep within the lives of the Emmerichs and making them as equally compassionate. My only problem with this book is that Bohjalian tends to "telegraph" a bit too much in the middle section, consequently the constant switching back and forth between events from Anna and Callum, to Uri and then to Cecilia slows the pace a bit and comes across as a bit contrived. The author, however is always relentless in his refusal to shy away from the carnage committed by the both Nazis and the Soviets.

Although most of the major players in this drama end up exhausted by their experiences, they are also often grateful for the small acts of kindness amidst all of this stunning atrocity. In the end, this tale shows that war can really bring forth the courage of people and their impossible goodness, and we see this repeated over and over again as this powerful novel moves towards its inevitable conclusion in a world that seems to have gone mad. Mike Leonard May 08.

So True that it's Frightening
The German Emmerich family had been living and farming in Kaminheim for generations, however after the Great War their farm wound up in Poland, so when Hitler reunited Prussia with Germany they are pleased to say the least. So much so that they have an autographed photo of the Fuhrer on their wall. For most of WW II it appears their faith in their leader is justified, but in the winter of 1945 with the advance Russians on the horizon with the stories of rape and pillage that follow in their wake, the Emmerich's decide it's time to leave and they head out with their horses and a couple wagons, hoping to make it to the Allied lines before the Russians get them.

However, the Patriarch of the family and his son stay behind to fight the oncoming hordes, leaving the mother, her nineteen-year-old daughter and ten-year-old son to soldier on with a Scottish POW who had been assigned by the German government to help with the farm. The POW by the way is having a rather torrid affair with the nineteen year old. And to round out this clan of fugitives we have a young escaped Jewish man who has been impersonating German soldiers so that he can kill German soldiers. So they have to avoid both Russian and German troops on their quest for safety.

But this is so much more than a good people running from bad men suspense kind of story. It's about right and wrong and how time and circumstance can blur them. It's about man's inhumanity to man. It's about love and cruelty, life and death, good and evil, all that stuff. It's about characters who struggle against impossible odds and improbable believes. It's about more than I can say. And this story is so true that it's frightening.