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© 2000 Kathy Craig |
Zookeeper's Wife
by Diane Ackerman
November 2008
Synopsis
A true story about the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo, who helped save hundreds of people from Nazi hands during World War II. (Publisher)
Reviews
- Nature is patient, people and animals fundamentally decent, and the writer, as she always does, outlives the killer—that is the message of The Zookeeper's Wife. This is an absorbing book, diminished sometimes by the choppy way Ackerman balances Antonina's account with the larger story of the Warsaw Holocaust. For me, the more interesting story is Antonina's. She was not, as her husband once called her, "a housewife," but the alpha female in a unique menagerie. I would gladly read another book, perhaps a novel, based again on Antonina's writings. She was special, and as the remaining members of her generation die off, a voice like hers should not be allowed to fade into the silence. (D.T. Max, The New York Times)
- Diane Ackerman has a molecule named after her (dianeackerone), but perhaps her greatest claim to fame is that all her works are wondrously different. Whether she's writing about "sacred play," the natural history of love, or the alchemy of the mind, she manages to arrest and stimulate our senses. (And, yes, she's written a book about the senses, too. And we haven't even mentioned her verse or her children's books.) The Zookeeper's Wife is a war story unlike any other. A narrative about a Warsaw animal keeper who saves hundreds of Jews from Nazi gas chambers draws inevitable comparisons with Schindler's List, but Ackerman's artful, almost lyrical book occupies a genre of her own invention. Her narrative interlaces stories of Jan and Antonina Zabinski's improvised sanctuary with telling glimpses into the animal societies their hunted benefactors shared. Ultimately, this is a book about what it means to be human. (Barnes & Noble)
- A lovely story about the Holocaust might seem like a grotesque oxymoron. But in The Zookeeper's Wife, Diane Ackerman proves otherwise. Here is a true story—of human empathy and its opposite—that is simultaneously grave and exuberant, wise and playful. Ackerman has a wonderful tale to tell, and she tells it wonderfully. (Susan Linfield, The Washington Post)
Book Club Rating and Comments
If you or your book club has read this book and would like to share your comments, please email us at upthecreekbc@yahoo.com.
Other Books by Diane Ackerman
- An Alchemy of Mind
- Animal Sense
- Bats: Shadows in the Night
- Blue Planet Run
- Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden
- Deep Play
- I Praise My Destroyer
- Jaguar of Sweet Laughter
- Moon by Whale Light
- Natural History of Love
- Natural History of the Senses
- Origami Bridges
- Rarest of the Rare
- Slender Thread