A Blessing on the Moon [Hardcover]

Joseph Skibell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 10, 1997

Winner of the Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Foundation Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters; and the Steven Turner Award for a First Book of Fiction, Texas Institute of Letters. Chaim Skibelski was a successful businessman, father, and husband before he was killed along with all the other Jews from his small Polish town during the Holocaust. Instead of peacefully resting in the World to Come, Chaim is left to walk the earth, wounds and all. On his journey Chaim unexpectedly finds hope, compassion, and renewal beneath the human propensity for destruction. A fabulous tour de force in the tradition of Jerzy Kosinski's THE PAINTED BIRD and the work of Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Chaim Skibelski rises from a pit of slaughter, leaving his dead townsmen and family behind, and returns to his home--now occupied by non-Jews. "In front of every house were piles of vows and promises, all in broken pieces. How I could see such things," he wonders, "I cannot tell you." So begins this magic-realist fiction, which is also a keen allegory of European Jews' war and postwar experience. "You think they can't kill us as often as they wish?" the narrator cries, and his distrust seems right. Though Chaim and the Rebbe are the only ones to have escaped the sudden roundup, they too, it soon becomes clear, are dead. The Rebbe has been transformed into a crow while Chaim's body seeps with blood and half of his face is missing. But if he's dead, why isn't he in the World to Come and why can some Poles and one German soldier see and hear him?

In his first novel, Joseph Skibell has created a fantasia both hideous and beautiful, a combination of mysticism, nightmare, and even humor. After Chaim and the Rebbe dig up other putrefied victims, the sorry, brave group moves painfully away from the village. Freezing days pass, perhaps years. "If you were the Rebbe, floating high above us, what you would see would be a great river of blood cutting a swath through the frozen winter hills." The author anatomizes the pilgrims' differences, cultural and religious, with love and wit. They are disputatious even in death--their debates threatening to overwhelm what holds them together. Though the phrase tour de force has been much abused, A Blessing on the Moon is exactly that: a daring fiction that shouldn't succeed on any level yet works on many.

From Library Journal

Chaim Skibelski is dead. Or is he? In the opening pages, he is shot and pushed into a pit along with his fellow Jews in a village in Poland. Chaim, accompanied by his rabbi in the form of a crow, escapes to wander among the living, unable to join the World To Come. His journey is divided into three parts. In the first, he revisits his old home, finding that a Polish family has taken over his business and personal effects. Here he meets Ola, a dying girl who can see him though her family can't. In the second part, he meets up with his old village and his family in a luxurious hotel that appears too good to be true. Finally, Chaim encounters Zalman and Kalman to complete a task involving the moon, the rabbi, and Skibelski himself. It is with this last step that the protagonist might finally find the peace that death should bring. Utterly different and surreal, this first novel takes an original approach to the Holocaust and leaves a lasting impression. For all literary collections.?Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., Ohio
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books; 1st edition (January 10, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565121791
• ISBN-13: 978-1565121799
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,032,522 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joseph Skibell's debut novel, A Blessing on the Moon, received the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Turner Prize for First Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters. A Book of the Month Club selection, the novel was named one of the year's best books by Publishers Weekly, Le Monde and Amazon.Com, and has been translated into half a dozen languages. The novel is currently being adapted into an opera. His second novel, The English Disease, received the Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Book of Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters. A Curable Romantic is his third novel. A recipient of a Halls Fiction Fellowship, a Michener Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Skibell is a professor at Emory University and the director of the Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature. He has been invited to give the inaugural reading in the Jewish Literature Series at the University of Pennsylania. (Photo by Jeffrey Allen)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece!, September 15, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Madison, Wisconsin, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Blessing on the Moon (Hardcover)

Joseph Skibell has written that rare book that I couldn't put down. Telling the story from the viewpoint of a Jew shot to death in the Holocaust who must roam the earth dead before going to the World-to-Come, "A Blessing on the Moon", while a story of the agony of the Jews in the Holocaust, is at times funny, sardonic, tender, horror-filled--there just aren't enough adjectives. This Christian found it to be more revealing to me of the Jewish mind, religion, and the atrocities committed against the Jews than any other book I've ever read. The only thing that made me sorry was my lack of understanding of some of the Yiddish words and expressions. However, I will read this book again and again, and recommend it to anybody who appreciates well-crafted writing.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great book and a gripping page-turner, December 27, 1998

By 

Sam Znaimer "Schmerke K" (Vancouver, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Blessing on the Moon (Hardcover)

After his murder by the Nazis, Chaim Skibelski finds himself giddy and ecstatic, despite lying dead in a pit with all of his neighbours. He begins a fantastic quest, searching to be reunited with his family and community, and to find the peace of the World To Come. But in the meantime, he wanders "the earth like an audience at intermission waiting for the concert to resume , unaware that the musicians have long since departed for home ?". In this imaginative work, Joesph Skibell succeeds magnificently in conveying the tragic scope of the Holocaust. But he never succumbs to the sentimentality or self-righteousness of other holocaust memoirs. With humor, a fine ear for dialogue, and a piercing wit he weaves his allegory. Truly, I laughed and I cried - but never felt manipulated. This is a an important work in its own right and a major step forward in the breadth of artistic expression that the Holocaust has inspired.

A great book and a gripping page-turner, this novel will appeal to many who would not otherwise pick up anything from the Holocaust genre.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Captivating, September 11, 2000

By 

Christina E. Bublick (Virginia Beach,, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Blessing on the Moon (Paperback)

Of the many Holocaust related books I have read, this is truly one of the most unique. Skibell requires that we use our imagination to enter a world beyond our earthly reach. Put yourself in my soul, imagine with me. Die needlessly, lose all your loved ones due to hate and prejudice and watch others greedily take over all you had. Scream silently. What would we do?

Skibell uses warm humor to depict the ugiliness and ignorance. We imagine, pain, yearn, cry out with him. How dear and wise is the Rebbe. How vulnerable is Chaim, even in death. Is this mystical or are our own dreams and nightmares close? Who would or could even dream anything as horrifying as the Holocaust? Who could imagine visualizing the aftermath? Skibell found a way to take us through it in a captivating, imaginary, witty, compassionate soulful way. In this, his first novel, he reaches deep to reveal such honesty and surrealism through 60 year old Chaim. Skibell's piece of imagination captures, grips, pulls, tugs, at the heart strings. The photographs, the reunion, the tenderness, the compassion, and mother's chicken soup.....all mixed in with blood, horrow, guns, graves, hatred and grief. Such is life!!! There is the magical and the morbid. We don't escape it. There was the Holocaust and we should never NEVER forget it!!! Not in life or in death. Through a good soul's spiritual journey and quest to find rest, and a lost moon...which too is helped to find it's home of rest in the sky...we learn. There are correlations between both. Through it all, we are to bless what we have learned and teach others. We are never to forget. May the blessed moon which shines down ever so brightly from the heavens remind us that Jews will not be smothered, as the moon will not remain lost or lose it's shine. You may bury the moon and bury people, but the glow will be restored and emerge shining. We can't kill spirits, only bodies. The moon shines. The soul moves on. A Blessing on the Moon is captivating and mystical with so much brilliant and shining symbolism.

Thank you Joseph Skibell for not being silent. Thank you Chaim and Rebbe who will live on in our imaginations long long after this book is read and into many lives.