Not as wildly exciting as it sounds.
Summary:
The Warsaw zoo is one of the best in the world in the 1940s, but tragedy is about to strike Poland as the Germans invade. The humble but well-connected and respected family of zookeepers, the Zabinski’s, try to keep their animals alive as well as their lifestyle. But they feel they must do more and start sheltering Jews and refugees in the abandoned cages of their animals. It’s a wild way of life with danger at every turn and a remarkable true story.
Verdict: 4.5/10
This book wasn’t bad… but it wasn’t phenomenal either.
The premise is intriguing, and it is relatively interesting to hear about that time period and the heroics of people helping one another. In that sense, the story is fine.
But all the excitement and danger is almost nonexistent. The novel sounded more like a history textbook.
Diane Ackerman described every little detail of every single person’s life. This is great to paint a scene of the beauty environment, the devastation of war, or the effect of people’s actions… but she felt the need to do this with every single scene, room, and person! Even if a guest only visited once or a person was slightly connected to Warsaw, the author felt the need to give their whole life story.
There’s something to be said about the complete and extensive research that went into this book, but this is too much. It takes away from the main story and the main character.
For being titled The Zookeeper’s Wife, Antonina wasn’t focused on like a namesake of a book should be. Everything happened around her. And while her contributions to the Underground, her super power with animals, and her other virtues were mentioned, the story seemed to happen around her more than really seeing her take action. There was not a lot of action, but copious amounts of description.
This was more of a poetic textbook comprising everything you could ever wish to know about Warsaw, the zoo, the Zabinski’s, and the Polish Underground. Just know what you’re getting yourself into, and you may enjoy it better. As I saw it, it was more of a chore to read something so factually and exhaustingly detailed.
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