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A review by chrissie_whitley
The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman
3.0
This book has been on my shelves since February 2017, a month before the film adaptation was released. Before that, I had neither heard of Ackerman's account as detailed in the book nor the Żabińskis who ran the Warsaw Zoo prior to and during World War II. The story itself is amazing, but the account by Ackerman left me a little dissatisfied.
While Ackerman certainly does a thorough job, her relayed tone and information felt choppy — particularly when she wandered outside the zoo to run a few reconnoissance laps around the war-torn area. Also, despite the wonderful woman Antonina Żabińska clearly was — her husband Jan is not to be ignored — which is difficult to manage when the book is named for Antonina, albeit not even by her given name, and instead by her identity as related to her husband, the zookeeper.
I felt Ackerman's struggle between providing all extraneous details as the war inched along over the course of those six years, and the more poetic and flowing writing of the diarist, Antonina — whom she quoted often. The some 300 souls saved by way of the zoo and the actions of the Żabińskis, felt difficult to parse, and Ackerman must've had a hard time focusing on a representative few because the stream of people on the page and hidden at the zoo felt too often beyond my reach and Ackerman's grasp.
I wanted more depth from this one and less of the minutiae — more personalized accounts and less dry detailing. I started this one in print — paperback in hand — but had to switch to the audiobook after 25% of the way through. Dry, reporting-style nonfiction makes its way into my head better via my ears than my eyes. Despite that, it was around the halfway point where I no longer had any interest in watching the movie adaptation — I feel as though I've gotten the entire story through Ackerman's eyes that can be managed. I'd love to possibly read more directly from Antonina's diary entries in the future . . . or at least a curated bunch of excerpts.
Audiobook, as narrated by [a:Suzanne Toren|315737|Suzanne Toren|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]: Toren did a great job — and even helped the bulk of the work by slipping into an accented voice to help differentiate between standard text and quoted dialogue or entries from the diaries. It would've been quite a struggle for me to finish this, had I not turned to the audiobook version a quarter of the way through.
While Ackerman certainly does a thorough job, her relayed tone and information felt choppy — particularly when she wandered outside the zoo to run a few reconnoissance laps around the war-torn area. Also, despite the wonderful woman Antonina Żabińska clearly was — her husband Jan is not to be ignored — which is difficult to manage when the book is named for Antonina, albeit not even by her given name, and instead by her identity as related to her husband, the zookeeper.
I felt Ackerman's struggle between providing all extraneous details as the war inched along over the course of those six years, and the more poetic and flowing writing of the diarist, Antonina — whom she quoted often. The some 300 souls saved by way of the zoo and the actions of the Żabińskis, felt difficult to parse, and Ackerman must've had a hard time focusing on a representative few because the stream of people on the page and hidden at the zoo felt too often beyond my reach and Ackerman's grasp.
I wanted more depth from this one and less of the minutiae — more personalized accounts and less dry detailing. I started this one in print — paperback in hand — but had to switch to the audiobook after 25% of the way through. Dry, reporting-style nonfiction makes its way into my head better via my ears than my eyes. Despite that, it was around the halfway point where I no longer had any interest in watching the movie adaptation — I feel as though I've gotten the entire story through Ackerman's eyes that can be managed. I'd love to possibly read more directly from Antonina's diary entries in the future . . . or at least a curated bunch of excerpts.
Audiobook, as narrated by [a:Suzanne Toren|315737|Suzanne Toren|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]: Toren did a great job — and even helped the bulk of the work by slipping into an accented voice to help differentiate between standard text and quoted dialogue or entries from the diaries. It would've been quite a struggle for me to finish this, had I not turned to the audiobook version a quarter of the way through.