Skeletons at the Feast (Jill)
Skeletons at the Feast
By Chris Bohjalian
Completed May 12, 2008
Many books have explored the exodus of Europeans and Jews who fled the approaching German army during World War II. In Skeletons at the Feast, Chris Bohjalian examined another type of evacuation – this time of a Prussian family trying to stay steps ahead of the vengeful Soviet army.
Loosely based on a diary of young Prussian girl, the story followed Anna, her mother (Mutti), her young brother, Theo, and Callum, a Scottish POW who was assigned to Anna’s estate in Prussia. Together, they migrated on foot during the harsh winter to the safety of western Germany. Intermingled with Anna’s story were also the narratives of Uri, a young Jewish man who disguised himself as a German soldier to escape concentration camps, and Cecile, a French Jewish woman who was imprisoned at a German “work camp.” All of these stories showed the atrocities of war on civilians and how they endured the hardships of fatigue, hunger, severe weather and artillery fire.
In the depiction of Cecile and her fellow female prisoners, Bohjalian spared no details. It was downright graphic. So too were the scenes that depicted the bitterness of the Soviet army as they invaded Germany. These scenes were hard to read and not for the faint of heart. I often wonder how these things happened within recent history, and then I remember that genocide still goes on – just in a different place to different people. And that’s why I think it’s important to read books such as Skeletons at the Feast, even though it can be hard to do so.
Skeletons at the Feast had a pedestrian approach to a hard subject matter. There was no deep symbolism or foreshadowing in this book – just words and lines strung together to tell a story. However, I often found that Bohjalian employed the “tell, not show” type of narrative, and the different character viewpoints were, at first, unparalleled and hard to follow. Nonetheless, the book was a page turner – one I would recommended to readers who enjoy books set during World War II or the Holocaust. (4/5)
