By: Chris Bohjalian Publisher: Shaye Areheart Books Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: Shaye Areheart Books Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 384 Publication Date: May 06, 2008 Release Date: May 06, 2008
Product Description: In January 1945, in the waning months of World War II, a small group of people begin the longest journey of their lives: an attempt to cross the remnants of the Third Reich, from Warsaw to the Rhine if necessary, to reach the British and American lines.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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