Wanda's Reviews > The Zookeeper's Wife

In a sentence: Someone else should have written the Zabinski's story. This mess, full of purple prose adds very little to the narrative of Polish heroism in World War II. Nor does it add much about the Jewish Holocaust and I simply do not know how Ackerman got the rights to the story, when so many other, better writers could have done justice to it.
Based on the great reviews from some rather credible sources, I couldn't wait to read this book. Wow, was I disappointed. First, there were factual errors throughout, which, given the archives that are available and translators/linguists to whom she could have turned, were inexcusable. Several had to do with the Cichociemni – clandestine special forces of which my dad was one. The correct number of these was 344 transported to Poland from the U.K. -- a number she got wrong - 365. Also, 18 were lost in the Uprising – not 11. Even a simple google search will give you the numbers. She also got the phonetic pronunciation wrong – it is cheeho-chiemnee, not cheeko – ch in Polish is pronounced as a simple H. Any Pole who speaks the language could have told her this.
There are other factual WW II things that are in error as well that others have mentioned in their reviews, so I won't belabor the issue, besides I think that this book is less about the context of WW II and more about Ackerman's self-indulgent poetic license.
OK, so Polish experience of WW II is my issue, and perhaps I am nit picking, but I am not making boatloads of money off this book – and when I write my own books, my editors and I make darn sure that the facts are correct.
The story of Jan and Antonina Zabinski, set during the German occupation of Poland, is a truly amazing one, in which these two courageous Warsawian zookeepers demonstrated courage, brilliance, resilience, and humanity in the face of the grossest barbarism this planet has seen. It is a story that is inspirational to say the least. Having said that, Ackerman did not tell it well, despite her laudable attempt to bring these unsung heroes the praise and attention they well deserved. Also praiseworthy was her unbundling of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising from the Warsaw Uprising – something that even some historians have conflated although they were separate happenings.
Having said that, the story was disjointed and she went on ad nauseum on tangents with descriptions about beetles, buffalo and cows and forgot the real reason for telling this story. I was expecting more insight on the Zabinskis and their Guests and their feelings during this horrible experience, not a tutorial on bugs.
As a critical reader and writer myself, I could try to be generous and say that her interminable asides and lists were an attempt at imparting the complexity of an issue, or the obsessiveness of amassing a collection. But the attempts failed. Perhaps this was because the author tried to conflate poetry and prose (she is a poet) and did so unsuccessfully.
Also, a propos of poetry, her overblown and flowery prose started to grate on me. To wit: "In a darkness that deep, fireflies dance across eyes that see into themselves." To continue: "Meanwhile, the brain piped fugues of worry and staged mind-theaters full of tragedies and triumphs, because unfortunately, the fear of death does wonders to focus the mind, inspire creativity, and heighten the senses.” HUH? Sorry – but I don’t find this poetic – just schmaltzy. Her writing style, full of overblown metaphors is just distracting and even exasperating at times.

All in all this is an admirable and truly remarkable story and because she had access to primary sources, to Antonina's extraordinary diary, Ackerman could have done incredible justice to these characters. Instead, Antonina’s journal gets rather lost in long "whimsical" rambling passages of struggling to save the zoo during the ravages of WWII.

Filtered through Ackerman, I found them (the characters) flat and at times Antonina just plain silly. Her mysticism actually drove me up the wall. As did her going on and on about Polish “culture” and superstition. Jan and Antonina were educated people – like my parents. They would have found the superstitions of the uneducated to be quaint at best and laughable. I doubt that they would have embraced them, as Ackerman suggests. Perhaps they might have found them charming. But Ackerman is a mystical sort, and I think she conflates her own view of life onto these characters.
Also, the author’s priorities were just weird. She would write in great detail about playing the piano and the derivation of the piece, but she skimmed over the actual logistics of how these folks actually managed to harbor their guests and how they got to the zoo itself, or the details of how they lived once they got there. THIS was important, not the details of bugs. She never made clear how this underground activity was carried out.
This story deserved someone with more understanding, perhaps with better acquaintance with the subject at large. The story is not very well told, nor are the details of the circumstances given the importance they deserve. She really falls down in terms of conveying the actual suffering, terror, and horror of the German occupation and the Risings. There are many books that convey this suffering well: Rising ‘44, When God Looked the Other Way, The Civilian Population and the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, The Ice Road, Forgotten Holocaust, among others. She lists Rising ‘44 in her bib – but she couldn’t have read it too carefully. I was surprised to read other reviews in which readers talk about how appalled they were at the suffering and conditions, because as far as I was concerned, she did not render those well at all.
If they want a real picture of WW II and what that was like for the people in Europe, there are far better stories that portray this time far more accurately.