The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman

My last regular category in the Popsugar Challenge was a bit of a toughie. It was to read a book that's becoming a movie in 2017. I looked at a bunch of lists of books being turned into movies this year and discovered that I had already read most of the ones that interested me. I started listening to Stephen King's It on Audible during my runs, but injuries and illness made my running sporadic for a few months and I lost my place in it. I want to go back to that novel eventually, but I figured that I had better start with something else for now. When The Zookeeper's Wife went on sale on Amazon, I decided to give this nonfiction WWII story a try.

 The Zookeeper's Wife tells the true story of Polish zookeepers Antonina Zabinski and her husband Jan. After Nazis bombed their zoo in Warsaw, they managed to save over 300 Jewish people by hiding them inside their empty animal cages and zoo buildings. They also aided Polish resistance fighters, regularly giving them a place to lay low when needed. By maintaining an elaborate system of coded language and subterfuge, Antonina and Jan evaded discovery by the Germans and helped the fight against Nazi oppression.

The story focuses mainly on Antonina, who is described as a strong woman who has a special gift with animals. Her life at the zoo prior to the war was idyllic and busy. She carried out her extensive duties at the zoo, entertained many important guests that came to see the animals, raised her own small son, and cared for an unusual menagerie of pets at home, including such varied species as lynxes, otters, and a badger. When the war arrived at her doorstep, she was forced to watch everything she loved slowly be dismantled. The zoo's beautiful exhibits were destroyed by bombs, animals died or escaped, and German soldiers harassed her family over the course of several terrifying incidents. However, she managed to keep her head up, preserve what remained of the zoo, and help as many people as she could to survive the war. She was a truly remarkable woman, and her story is nothing short of inspiring.

Ackerman reconstructed this story primarily through entries from Antonina's journal, and she regularly weaves together Antonina's words with other historical facts and details about the time period. Her writing style is highly descriptive and very artistic, which has the benefit of making the story read like a fiction novel in parts, but it also has the drawback of feeling less accurate than a more traditional nonfiction text would. She is also prone to lengthy digressions away from Antonina in which she gives a lot of extra details about other people, animals, landscapes, and local Polish customs. Ackerman is a gifted writer, and the way she writes nonfiction is unusual. It's one of those situations where people with either be totally into it or will be annoyed by it.

As for myself, I enjoyed her writing well enough in the beginning, and I and found most of her extra information to be interesting, but my patience for it dropped off over time. I started to get frustrated with all the extraneous details and had trouble following the thread of Antonina's story. I started getting the order of events mixed up, forgetting who different people were, and confusing the names of the pets. The subject matter of the novel is intensely interesting, and that kept me engaged in the story, but this wasn't a pleasurable read for me. The format was so scattered and the digressions so random that I found myself irritated and anxious to just finish the book and be done with it.

Despite my disappointment in Ackerman's writing style, I am still glad that I chose to read The Zookeeper's Wife. I learned a lot about how Poland was affected by WWII, and I really enjoyed the parts of the novel that focused on Antonina and her family. I loved the story and am in awe of Antonina's bravery, I just wish that a different writer had taken on the task of bringing her story to the world.


Challenge Tally
Popsugar Challenge: (a book that's becoming a movie in 2017) 40/40 - Yay!

Total Books Read in 2017: 47