Skeletons at the Feast is a novel inspired by a war time diary that serendipitously came into the author’s hands. Like A World Elsewhere, its subject is the westward trek of an upper middle class Baltic German family, the Emmerichs, escaping the Russian advance at the end of WW II. Here, too, it is an indomitable woman, Mutti, the mother of Anna, Theo, and Helmut, who organizes the family’s flight. Like Aimee, Mutti’s resourcefulness and determination miraculously overcome the dire lack of food, warm clothing, and indoor shelter in the fierce winter of their perilous journey toward the Western front.
Liberation of Paris, Leclerc's 2nd Armoured Division (2e DB) parading down the Champs Elysées on 26 August 1944, the day after the Liberation of Paris;
Skeletons at the Feast, however, provides a more expansive view of wartime Germany and the Nazi policies that produced so much upheaval, terror and death. Only barely mentioned and briefly summarized by the author in A World Elsewhere, these descriptions add great interest to Bohjalian's main narrative, made up of interlocking stories. One of these is the developing love between Anne, the Emmerich daughter, and Callum, a Scottish prisoner of war assigned to work on the Emmerich's farm. The family includes him in their trek, hiding him under the sacks of food in their wagons, despite the danger if he is discovered.
As the novel progresses, the Emmerichs become more aware of the nature of Naziism and, unlike Heinrich's family in MacRae’s memoir, begin, however furtively, to discuss their views among each other. While the older brother, Helmut, embodies and articulates the more conventional patriotism of an idealized Nazi soldier, the Emmerich women become more openly hostile, and Theo, the shy and sensitive younger Emmerich son discloses the bullying he suffered in his coerced participation in the Nazi Youth Movement.
Perhaps the most fascinating character in the novel is Uri, a young Jewish man who escapes from a freight train filled with Jews on their way to a death camp. His continuing speculations on the whereabouts of his family and friends are important reminders of the Nazi extermination policy.
Uri joins the Emmerichs as they flee the Russian advance and head toward the American zone. His reports of his experiences on the run under Naziism expand the Emmerich's horizons, as they, like Heinrich’s family, had earlier been largely insulated by their elevated social class and political connections. An additional narrative thread provides direct evidence of Nazi brutality in the portrayal of Jewish women in a labor camp, tormented, left to die from hunger, and often shot by their brutal guards.
Here again we meet and identity with indomitable women who never lose their humanity. Perhaps more than A World Elsewhere or Suite Francaise, Skeletons at the Feast will engross a wide popular audience with the suspense of its various plots which continues until literally, the very last page.
Suite Francaise consists of two novellas, both set in occupied France during 1940 — 1941. Its author, Irene Nemirovsky, a Ukranian Jewish refugee from the Russian Revolution, was an already established French novelist when the Nazi invasion of Paris forced her to flee with her family to a small village in central France. It was there that she wrote Suite Francaise which was originally envisioned as a five part novel. But with the Vichy French collaboration with the Germans in rounding up Jews for the death camps, Nemirovsky was sent to Auschwitz, where she died, her novel unfinished.
Over half a century later her daughters discovered her handwritten manuscript, as well as elaborate notes for its completion. The publication, in 2006, of the two novellas, with an appendix of Nemirovsky's notes for its completion, caused a well-deserved sensation.
It is a testimony to Nemirovsky's brilliant, subtle, and ironic writing that we follow her characters with great interest, although many of them, particularly in the first novella, Storm in June, are odious, totally self- centered, people, oblivious to the plight of anyone but themselves. We can only shake our head in disbelief as these upper class individuals, some with their families, others with their mistresses, pack their valuable collectables, their silk sheets, their high end fashionable clothing, and other symbols of their class status into the automobiles that they imagine will easily take them to a safer part of France.
Dolce, the second novella takes place in a small farming village in central France. It is perhaps more interesting than Storm because of its wider range of sympathetic characters and their greater awareness of the impact of the war beyond their immediate surroundings. The village is soon occupied by Germans, whose relationships with the villagers vary. Central to this narrative is a growing attachment between a young woman whose husband is a POW somewhere in Germany and the German officer who billets in their home. The village, too, has a strict social hierarchy which Nemirovsky subtly inserts into the various story lines. The novella leaves us uncertain of the outcomes of its narratives, but the appendices, which give us a sense of what might have happened to her characters had the author survived the war, are fascinating.
Although very different in style, each of these books provoke many reflections, particularly regarding what we ourselves might do in the disastrous circumstances described. They make clear that "while we may not be interested in politics, politics is interested in us" and that denial is not a successful individual or historical strategy. They also take us beyond the "myths" of war, which are always accompanied by nationalistic propaganda. In spite of the distressing display of human indifference and even viciousness in each of these books, each nevertheless leaves us with a feeling of admiration for how human beings can remain steadfast and compassionate even under the very worst of conditions.
©2014 Serena Nanda for SeniorWomen.com
*Serena Nanda is a cultural anthropologist and professor emeritus at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York. One of her major interests is the cultural contexts of murder mysteries and she is a co-author of two crime novels, The Gift of a Bride: A Tale of Anthropology, Matrimony and Murder and Assisted Dying: An Ethnographic Murder Mystery on Florida's Gold Coast.
She has published many books, articles and film reviews on gender variance including Neither Man nor Woman: the Hijras of India and Gender Diversity: Crosscultural Variations.
A born and bred New Yorker, Nanda has also co-authored a New York guide book. She can be reached at: snanda (at) jjay.cuny.edu
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