Cindy M. (RenascenceC) reviewed on 10/28/2009 + 77 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 1

I enjoyed Diane Ackerman's *A Natural History of the Senses* a couple of decades ago and thought this might be a good read with a lot of detail, and it was. The material is compelling--a recreation of the WWII days of the family in charge of the Warsaw Zoo, showing how the Underground worked throughout the city and country but especially in this odd locale. Ackerman is a researcher and a list-maker but not a novelist-type narrator, so there are jumps and holes through this work, as when she tells us that the mother and two small children also have a mother-in-law and some other women and children with them on an escape from Warsaw at the end of the war, but in the ensuing details the impression is given that it is just the mother and two small children, except when one of the anonymous others is mentioned. I understand Ackerman's not wanting to go beyond the historical details she has, but she does so elsewhere, and the result is not satisfying to those of us who are used to really fine novels and historical accounts.

Nevertheless, this is an important story to know, and she tells it with satisfying detail. What a wonder, to think of people hiding in the zoo animals' cages just steps from a German Army installation! I had not been particularly familiar with the fate of Poland through the War, and this book has done a lot to help me understand how an Underground works, and how there was not so absolute a dividing line between the ghetto and the city, the Jews and the Gentiles.

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