Author: Diane Ackerman
Type: Audiobook
Narrator: Suzanne Toren
Genre: Nonfiction history
Series: No
Copyright: 2007
Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks
Rating: 2 out of 5
Summary: from Good Reads
The New York Times bestseller: a true story in which the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo saved hundreds of people from Nazi hands.
After their zoo was bombed, Polish zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski managed to save over three hundred people from the Nazis by hiding refugees in the empty animal cages. With animal names for these "guests," and human names for the animals, it's no wonder that the zoo's code name became "The House Under a Crazy Star." Best-selling naturalist and acclaimed storyteller Diane Ackerman combines extensive research and an exuberant writing style to re-create this fascinating, true-life story—sharing Antonina's life as "the zookeeper's wife," while examining the disturbing obsessions at the core of Nazism.
Feelings:
This book was a bit hard for me to get into even as an audiobook. The narrator did a really good job. It was hard for me because while this was a story it often wandered off on tangents. While these were interesting, I often didn't see how they related to the story of the war and the zoo.
I had originally gotten this as a paperback book, however, I am glad I didn't try and read it because I never would have made it through. I appreciated Suzanne Toren reading this because it added to the story and without it being something I was listening to on my drives to and from work I don't think this would have been a book I continued. I do admit that the ending didn't really work for me and I think the book could have been shorter and probably better for it. I do not recommend that anyone sit down to read this book because it is very slow passed and at times drifts from the story of the Nazi occupation of Warsaw and leaves you wondering why that was important to the book and story of Antonina, the zookeeper's wife.
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