Half way through the book. Started out an interesting read.. has settled into lots of facts about the German occupation of Poland. One whole page is a list of the different lampshades in a store that people used as a shelter from the bombing in Warsaw. The descriptions of what happened to the zoo animals are very sad and maddening. The animals were innocent bystanders caught up in the cruelty of man.
Finished reading the book today. So much ingenuity, bravery and desire to help one another in only one place, time and life is a microscopic view of all those people who did what they could to fight the evil of their day. Growing up I heard many jokes degrading the intelligence of the Polish people. This book totally debunks that idea. The Polish people in this book showed a great deal of intelligence to accomplish all they did to survive and to help others survive.
The descriptions and narratives of the different animals (badger, rabbit, hedgehog, hamster, cat) pointed out how Antonina and Ryz kmanaged to keep alive their love and enjoyment of animals in the midst of their fears and uncertainties. It kept the "zoo" of this book from becoming simply another story of people hiding people.
On the back of my book it says, "A lovely story about the Holocaust...simultaneously grave and exuberant, wise and playfull." I found it to be depressing. I agree witwh B that the descriptions of what happened to the zoo animals are very sad and maddening. (I also agree with the rest of what B already posted)
So, I didn't like the book because it was too much a war story with death and destruction, but I did like the writing. I especially like the parts where Ackerman described the animals and their behaviors (before she killed them off). I see she's written other books- I might be interested in trying one of them, though I will research it a little better first.
I have a number of sections that I wanted to highlight:
Chapter 1: "to help midwife an animal like a giraffe (always tricky because the mother gives birth standing up, the calf falls headfirst, and the most doesn't want help anyway)." LOL
"It is by living beside animals tha tyou learn their behavior and psychology." Agreed.
Chapter 5-6: I found the descriptions of the war to be interesting when it wasn't personalized to this animal being killed or this person being sent to concentration camps. We political scientists like our war descriptions sanitized.
Chapter 10: The discussion of animal instincts versus war is something we discuss every year in my International Relations class. I try to get my students to understand that war is not aggression like in the animal kingdom, that it takes higher thought and organization to kill on such a grand scale.
I'll finish in another comment- I'm always afraid the computer will dump a long comment after I've written it.
Chapter 14: Antonina making a pheasant pate out of crow and not telling the ladies because, "Why spoil their appetite with mere details of zoological naming?"
Chapter 15: Not only did they have to kill the animals, but they had to dig up the roses? Seriously?
B- you forgot to mention the page on beetles.
Chapter 17: "Most people know that 30-40 percent of the world's Jews were killed during World War II, but not that 80-90 percent of the Orthodox community perished." I didn't know that.
Chapter 20: And further depressing, the school teacher who goes with the children of the orphanage to the concentration camps to die. Urgh.
Chapter 25: Reskinning. Another piece of trivia I did not know about.
Chapter 27: "He'd made her near nightmare sound relatively unimportant." It was about this stage of the book that I started to get fed up with Jan.
I did like how she wrapped up what happened to the people (and some of the animals) at the end of the book.
BTW: While I enjoyed the pictures at the center of the book, they did not look at all like I had imagined them and it messed up my mental images for the rest of the book. Did anyone else have this problem?
Sorry it took so long for me to finish. We’ve had some major stuff going on here – graduation, college stuff and our exchange student. In September things SHOULD quiet down.
I did not really care for this book. The premise was superb but the execution did not live up to my expectations. The writing was very choppy but with over 300 “guests” to write about, I guess it would be difficult to include a lot of the stories. Maybe Ackerman should have focused on fewer of them. The book reports “just the facts ma’am” and was rather cold and impersonal.
I thought a map of Europe, a map of Poland and a map of Warsaw would be very beneficial.
I got confused by the year being in the “chapter title”. I would read that as a progression in the timeline but then 2 chapters later the year was repeated again. So I wasn’t sure what to make of that. For example, the first sentence of chapter 23 begins “New Year, 1943” but the title doesn’t include 1943. Chapter 24 begins “In the spring of 1943”, but the title of chapter 25 includes “1943”, I already know that, why? Maybe a timeline in the beginning of the book would help too.
Some major events were glossed over – like the birth of Antonia’s daughter and Jan’s return from internment camp. To me, they warrant more than a sentence but yet there are lengthy description of beetles and composer background. Some of this should have going to the back under “Details”.
I did learn some things though – especially HYENA BUTTER! Ewwwww!
I was appalled by the New Year’s eve shooting party in Chapter 10. Poor Rys.
I had no idea about all the cosmetic things done to disguise a Jew (Chapter 25) and how very troublesome it must be for people tracing their geneology (chapter 28).
M, I wish there were more pictures in the center of Jan, Antonia and Rys rather than the animals. I could have skipped the polar bears and hyenas (especially after the hyena butter). I would have rather had the timeline and maps rather than the pictures.
I felt for the animals and saw no point in ripping up the roses. Also, what happened to the insect collection, did it say and I forgot?
Another thing, my heart was in my throat in Chapter 31, when the German SS men took Rys behind the shed and fired shots, only to kill a rooster. O. M. G.
Once again I'm last to finish. Sorry to say that I didn't really care for the style of this book. It was too much fact and not enough novel for me. I did, however, learn a new term that I'd like to share: Purple Prose. It means flowery, ornate writing that detracts from the overall piece. The origin comes from Horace's Ars Poetica: "Your opening shows great promise, and yet flashy purple patches; as when describing a sacred grove, or the altar of Diana, or a stream meandering through fields, or the river Rhine, or a rainbow; but this was not the place for them. If you can realistically render a cypress tree, would you include one when commissioned to paint a sailor in the midst of a shipwreck?"
I found a lot of this purple prose following phrases such as "it's likely he" (30) "she's bound to have" (37) "one can picture her" (50) "she might have been tempted to" (87). These parts really bothered me, because the book was shelved in non-fiction. Either be a novel, or be non-fiction, but don't try to be both.
Also the description of Eugene Fisher "fascinated by violence and the red-blooded manly spirit -- naturally brave, daring, fierce, hardy, sane, lusty, strong willed" (83). Sane might be a stretch.
Another phrase that caught my eye: "I watched her face switch among the radio stations of memory. ... Halina's face flushed a little from that tall umbrella drink of memory" (312). Uhm.. what?
I also noted the beetle page for comment but since it's already been mentioned I'll skip it.
It wasn't all bad though, I really liked the truth of this line: "In a quiet that dense, body sounds become audible, one hears blood surging and the bellows of the lungs. In a darkness that deep, fireflies dance across eyes that see into themselves" (87).
My favorite parts were the excerpts from Antonina's diaries. She had a lovely way of writing. I particularly enjoyed the bit she wrote from the point of view of an animal "It didn't take long to realize that the soft fabric slippers, the blond fluffy head, and the high-pitched voice were all the same object" (25).
Combined with events in Egypt this past week, this book really makes me ask myself what I would do if soldiers came to Troy and started shooting innocent people. I don't think there's a way to know until it happens to you, and let's all hope that we are never faced with such a situation.
M- yes, it does mess around with my mental image a bit, but I love authors who include photographs.
B- totally agree with you about the narratives of the animals. Also some of my favorite parts.
J- agreed, a map would be handy. I always need a map, because I'm so geographically challenged. My heart rate really went up when the Germans took Rys behind the shed. I can't imagine what Antonina must have felt.
10 comments:
Half way through the book. Started out an interesting read.. has settled into lots of facts about the German occupation of Poland. One whole page is a list of the different lampshades in a store that people used as a shelter from the bombing in Warsaw. The descriptions of what happened to the zoo animals are very sad and maddening. The animals were innocent bystanders caught up in the cruelty of man.
Finished reading the book today. So much ingenuity, bravery and desire to help one another in only one place, time and life is a microscopic view of all those people who did what they could to fight the evil of their day. Growing up I heard many jokes degrading the intelligence of the Polish people. This book totally debunks that idea. The Polish people in this book showed a great deal of intelligence to accomplish all they did to survive and to help others survive.
The descriptions and narratives of the different animals (badger, rabbit, hedgehog, hamster, cat) pointed out how Antonina and Ryz kmanaged to keep alive their love and enjoyment of animals in the midst of their fears and uncertainties. It kept the "zoo" of this book from becoming simply another story of people hiding people.
On the back of my book it says, "A lovely story about the Holocaust...simultaneously grave and exuberant, wise and playfull." I found it to be depressing. I agree witwh B that the descriptions of what happened to the zoo animals are very sad and maddening. (I also agree with the rest of what B already posted)
So, I didn't like the book because it was too much a war story with death and destruction, but I did like the writing. I especially like the parts where Ackerman described the animals and their behaviors (before she killed them off). I see she's written other books- I might be interested in trying one of them, though I will research it a little better first.
I have a number of sections that I wanted to highlight:
Chapter 1: "to help midwife an animal like a giraffe (always tricky because the mother gives birth standing up, the calf falls headfirst, and the most doesn't want help anyway)." LOL
"It is by living beside animals tha tyou learn their behavior and psychology." Agreed.
Chapter 2: pronk = pogo stick. Okay. twelfth elephent baby named tuzin (dozen). Okay.
Chapter 5-6: I found the descriptions of the war to be interesting when it wasn't personalized to this animal being killed or this person being sent to concentration camps. We political scientists like our war descriptions sanitized.
Chapter 10: The discussion of animal instincts versus war is something we discuss every year in my International Relations class. I try to get my students to understand that war is not aggression like in the animal kingdom, that it takes higher thought and organization to kill on such a grand scale.
I'll finish in another comment- I'm always afraid the computer will dump a long comment after I've written it.
Chapter 14: Antonina making a pheasant pate out of crow and not telling the ladies because, "Why spoil their appetite with mere details of zoological naming?"
Chapter 15: Not only did they have to kill the animals, but they had to dig up the roses? Seriously?
B- you forgot to mention the page on beetles.
Chapter 17: "Most people know that 30-40 percent of the world's Jews were killed during World War II, but not that 80-90 percent of the Orthodox community perished." I didn't know that.
Chapter 20: And further depressing, the school teacher who goes with the children of the orphanage to the concentration camps to die. Urgh.
Chapter 25: Reskinning. Another piece of trivia I did not know about.
Chapter 27: "He'd made her near nightmare sound relatively unimportant." It was about this stage of the book that I started to get fed up with Jan.
I did like how she wrapped up what happened to the people (and some of the animals) at the end of the book.
BTW: While I enjoyed the pictures at the center of the book, they did not look at all like I had imagined them and it messed up my mental images for the rest of the book. Did anyone else have this problem?
Sorry it took so long for me to finish. We’ve had some major stuff going on here – graduation, college stuff and our exchange student. In September things SHOULD quiet down.
I did not really care for this book. The premise was superb but the execution did not live up to my expectations. The writing was very choppy but with over 300 “guests” to write about, I guess it would be difficult to include a lot of the stories. Maybe Ackerman should have focused on fewer of them. The book reports “just the facts ma’am” and was rather cold and impersonal.
I thought a map of Europe, a map of Poland and a map of Warsaw would be very beneficial.
I got confused by the year being in the “chapter title”. I would read that as a progression in the timeline but then 2 chapters later the year was repeated again. So I wasn’t sure what to make of that. For example, the first sentence of chapter 23 begins “New Year, 1943” but the title doesn’t include 1943. Chapter 24 begins “In the spring of 1943”, but the title of chapter 25 includes “1943”, I already know that, why? Maybe a timeline in the beginning of the book would help too.
Some major events were glossed over – like the birth of Antonia’s daughter and Jan’s return from internment camp. To me, they warrant more than a sentence but yet there are lengthy description of beetles and composer background. Some of this should have going to the back under “Details”.
I did learn some things though – especially HYENA BUTTER! Ewwwww!
I was appalled by the New Year’s eve shooting party in Chapter 10. Poor Rys.
I had no idea about all the cosmetic things done to disguise a Jew (Chapter 25) and how very troublesome it must be for people tracing their geneology (chapter 28).
M, I wish there were more pictures in the center of Jan, Antonia and Rys rather than the animals. I could have skipped the polar bears and hyenas (especially after the hyena butter). I would have rather had the timeline and maps rather than the pictures.
I felt for the animals and saw no point in ripping up the roses. Also, what happened to the insect collection, did it say and I forgot?
Another thing, my heart was in my throat in Chapter 31, when the German SS men took Rys behind the shed and fired shots, only to kill a rooster. O. M. G.
J - the insect collection survives, and detailed instructions how to view it are listed in the last 2 pages of chapter 16. =)
Once again I'm last to finish. Sorry to say that I didn't really care for the style of this book. It was too much fact and not enough novel for me. I did, however, learn a new term that I'd like to share: Purple Prose. It means flowery, ornate writing that detracts from the overall piece. The origin comes from Horace's Ars Poetica:
"Your opening shows great promise, and yet flashy
purple patches; as when describing
a sacred grove, or the altar of Diana,
or a stream meandering through fields,
or the river Rhine, or a rainbow;
but this was not the place for them. If you can realistically render
a cypress tree, would you include one when commissioned to paint
a sailor in the midst of a shipwreck?"
I found a lot of this purple prose following phrases such as "it's likely he" (30) "she's bound to have" (37) "one can picture her" (50) "she might have been tempted to" (87). These parts really bothered me, because the book was shelved in non-fiction. Either be a novel, or be non-fiction, but don't try to be both.
Also the description of Eugene Fisher "fascinated by violence and the red-blooded manly spirit -- naturally brave, daring, fierce, hardy, sane, lusty, strong willed" (83). Sane might be a stretch.
Another phrase that caught my eye: "I watched her face switch among the radio stations of memory. ... Halina's face flushed a little from that tall umbrella drink of memory" (312). Uhm.. what?
I also noted the beetle page for comment but since it's already been mentioned I'll skip it.
It wasn't all bad though, I really liked the truth of this line: "In a quiet that dense, body sounds become audible, one hears blood surging and the bellows of the lungs. In a darkness that deep, fireflies dance across eyes that see into themselves" (87).
My favorite parts were the excerpts from Antonina's diaries. She had a lovely way of writing. I particularly enjoyed the bit she wrote from the point of view of an animal "It didn't take long to realize that the soft fabric slippers, the blond fluffy head, and the high-pitched voice were all the same object" (25).
Combined with events in Egypt this past week, this book really makes me ask myself what I would do if soldiers came to Troy and started shooting innocent people. I don't think there's a way to know until it happens to you, and let's all hope that we are never faced with such a situation.
Forgot to comment on the pictures in the middle.
M- yes, it does mess around with my mental image a bit, but I love authors who include photographs.
B- totally agree with you about the narratives of the animals. Also some of my favorite parts.
J- agreed, a map would be handy. I always need a map, because I'm so geographically challenged. My heart rate really went up when the Germans took Rys behind the shed. I can't imagine what Antonina must have felt.
Post a Comment