Review: THE ZOOKEEPER'S WIFE

The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


During World War II, few cities were as horrific to live in as Warsaw. Seized by the Nazis in 1939, abandoned by their allies, Poland saw its capital turn overnight from a vibrant, cultural city of mixed population—30 percent were of Jewish descent—into a nightmare of German occupation. Yes, Paris and Amsterdam were occupied; London was blitzed. But Warsaw bled like no other. Its very spirit was crushed, its Jewish population herded into the ghetto, packed seven to a room. Nazi soldiers massacred their children, humiliated their elders, and eventually shipped hundreds of thousands to labor and concentration camps. These days, according to a recent Wikipedia article, Jews number about 1,000 in all of Poland, having been nearly eradicated from that country.

But horror of this magnitude produces heroism of equal magnitude, and herein lies the story of Antonina and Jan Zabinski, zookeepers who used their gutted enclosures to hide more than 300 Jews and helped transport them to safe havens outside of Warsaw. An active member of the Underground, Jan helped arrange for false identification papers, smuggled people out of the ghetto, and performed various acts of sabotage against the German occupiers. Meanwhile, Antonina maintained her household of revolving “Guests” and worked to keep up the spirits of her young son, who saw friends both animal and human fall victim to Hitler’s siege.

Diane Ackerman has done a remarkable job of recreating Antonina’s world from her memoirs, interviews, and other research. Each chapter details a pocket of this strange life, from brave characters to unusual friendships. From the terrifying initial capture of Warsaw to the horrors of the ghetto and at last the retreat of the German army, this story follows lives so closely that the reader feels she is looking over Antonina’s shoulder as she anxiously awaits her husband’s return each day. With taut, suspenseful, yet lyrical prose, Ackerman brings their situation to life even more vividly than the eight pages of photographs included.

As in Tatiana de Rosnay’s novel Sarah's Key, readers of The Zookeeper’s Wife know how the story ends. In fact, the story is so familiar to some of us that we forget these were real people, leading real day to day lives without knowing when, or if, the end was coming. These were people who risked their lives—their son—every day because they couldn’t see living any other way. One method of coping was to carry cyanide capsules always in their pockets. Death was that close.

While this tale will be difficult for those of us who have grown complacent and comfortable, it is vital to remember that we always have alternatives to permitting the impermissible. These stories remind us that even when the worst of humanity triumphs, the best of humanity is always waiting underneath, quietly simmering, not to be denied. By one estimate, some 20,000 Jews hid outside the ghetto in the city of Warsaw. Without the network of grocers, forgers, saboteurs, housekeepers, teachers, beauty salon owners, and others, those 20,000 people would have joined the rest of Jewish Warsaw at Treblinka. These are stories meant to uplift, but more than that, they should shame us into action. None of us is too weak to stand up to tyranny.

Review: GENTLEMEN & PLAYERS by Joanne Harris

It’s been awhile since I had as much delicious fun as I’ve had reading Gentlemen and Players the last few days. Always fascinating, never overwritten, Harris’s novel speeds along through a tale of deception, intrigue, and above all, preserving what’s proper and good, even if that means shoving an awful lot of dirt under an expensive Turkish rug.

The setting is St. Oswald’s Grammar School for Boys in northern England, a private school throwback to the days when manicured cricket pitches and carefully groomed, uniformed boys were the backbone of British education. Though no longer a boarding school, St. Oswald’s preserves every other vestige of its stuffy, exclusionary history. But one student seems determined to bring the place to its knees.

It takes a bit of attention to follow the different points of view in the book. One storyline takes place in the not-too-distant past: Our hero, Snyde, longs to attend St. Oswald’s but is instead relegated to a horrid public school attended mostly by bullies from the council estate. Snyde’s one hope is that now that dear old Dad has become the porter at St. Oswald’s, it will be easy to sneak inside the walls and pretend to be a student. What could possibly go wrong with that plan?

Well ... plenty. But fast-forward twenty years, and now here’s grown-up Snyde, a St. Oswald’s teacher. Through innuendo, machinations, evil plots, and violence, Snyde is determined to ruin the once-beloved school.

The third viewpoint is that of Roy Straitley, the Latin master who’s near retirement age and loves St. Oswald’s despite his sardonic observations and clear disrespect for its administration. Only Straitley is suspicious of the scandals that suddenly are unearthed; and only he sees the connection to the events of years past, that “bad business” he alludes to as St. Oswald’s last great scandal.

It’s up to the reader to connect these threads, or wait for Joanne Harris to bring them all together. She knows her territory as a former private school teacher herself. Poignantly she shows us the yearning of the underprivileged to enter the scholar’s world, the rigid class system that holds young Snyde at arm’s length, and yet we understand as well the realm of Roy Straitley, who truly loves his students even if the lower class is virtually invisible to him.

Along with some great writing and characterization, we’re treated to a suspenseful yarn that serves up more than one unexpected knot. The only downside is that now I’m stuck wishing it weren’t over.

Review: THE LITTLE BOOK by Selden Edwards

Time Travel fiction
Plume, 2009
416 pages  $15.00 

When Selden Edwards began kicking around the idea for this book in 1974, he happened by chance on its principal setting—1897 Vienna—and discovered to his delight that it was a convergence of all sorts. When else did Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler, Mark Twain, and Adolf Hitler come so close together? Add to the mix a displaced time traveler, his legendary father, his beautiful young lover, his long-suffering mother, and you’ve got a story that spans the centuries and holds in the balance the darkest moments of the twentieth century.

In fact, Vienna at this time straddled two colliding centuries: the Victorian age and the modern age; empires teetering on the brink of democracy; women struggling to be heard in the bedroom and at the polls; the specter of anti-Semitism; the tumult of the Industrial Revolution giving way to the airplane, the Panzer tank, the atom bomb. The Viennese could eat pastry, talk politics, and waltz to their hearts’ content, but their world was about to come crashing down around their ears, and in this gem of a novel, the reader can feel that portent hanging heavy in the air—and not just because we know what’s about to occur.

Into this pressure cooker steps Wheeler Burden—scholar, athlete, 1970s rock star—thrown into the past without knowing why or how. Wheeler’s colorful life up until this point is a subplot the author deftly weaves in and out of his current dilemma as Wheeler finds his sea legs. The twists and turns of plot keep us guessing to the end, and while they’re entertaining and make for a wickedly fun read, deeper questions are at stake: What is time? Do we create our own future, or is it laid out before us like a map, a journey that fate forces us to trudge along? How do we define heroism and the nature of love? How much right do we have to tamper with the lives of others?

Big questions and a fascinating story, laced with warm, lovely characters and historical figures. No wonder Edwards took more than 30 years to pen this one. We’ll be talking about it for a lot longer than that.

The Agent Speaks

With trepidation I have waited to hear from My Lovely Agent on what he thinks needs doing (cutting?!) on the book. Would he want me to axe my favorite characters? Cut the word count in half? Transfer the action to Las Vegas, circa 1970? One trembled to think.

Yesterday, these fears proved to be groundless. MLA sent back my manuscript with lots of comments in the margins, many of them complimentary, all of them tactfully worded. He also sent an 11-page memo discussing the book in great detail—what works, what could use work, what might be sacrificed in the name of coherence, and so on. Imagine that! Someone cares enough about my little book to talk about it for 11 pages! It feels strange to see my characters cavorting on someone else’s pages, discussed as if they’re real, living people (or centaurs). Wahoo! I’m not alone anymore!

And now ... to the business of revising.

Eat Your Popular Orange Veggies

Are you guilty of overusing your POVs?

No, not points of view--popular orange vegetables.

It seems the blogger of all things English for The Guardian (UK) sees too many colorful synonyms in news stories. You know the kind of thing. For example, in the Kansas City Star, actress Melissa Leo was referred to later in the article as "the wiry redhead." When one story in The Liverpool Echo referred to carrots as "the popular orange vegetable," throwing the newsroom into hysterics, our British blogger started calling all such hateful synonymous phrases POVs.

While I'm sympathetic to the cause--and I do get tired of hearing various countries called "the war-torn republic" or heads of state nicknamed "the beleagured leader"--I have to say that sometimes these phrases do impart a little extra info. The "wiry redhead" mentioned above provokes a chuckle, and maybe that could have been phrased better, but at least now I know Melissa Leo is a redhead. And wiry.

Read the blog and form your own opinion on the topic. The comments actually give some of the best examples (bananas = "bendy yellow fruit").

It's Not a Word, Thank God

I had a heart-stopping moment today during e-mail perusal, grammar fans. Every day I get loads of messages and updates from that venerable publication, Writer's Digest. They let me know what's going on in WD World in case I was too lazy to check the blogs (I usually am). Today one e-mail had this to say:

We all see the word "alot" used in various places, but our teachers always told us not to use it. Has something changed? Your favorite newsletter editor Brian A. Klems has the scoop. Click to continue.

--> Hail to good e-mail marketers everywhere! They can, occasionally, force me to do something I'd rather not. I know the story behind the word alot (it ain't one). I don't need Newsletter Editor Klems to clarify the matter for me. But the Insecure Grammarian within quailed just a bit upon reading the question

Has something changed?

and the command

 Click to continue.

 I clicked. I had to know.

Scoop update: Alot is still not a word. Ah, the relief of the righteous! Click here to read Brian's reassuring post. Click here to read what is (to my mind) a hilarious send-up of the nonword alot.

Donut probably is a word. *SIGH*

Learning Your Konglish

The great thing about having a blog that, honestly, few people stand in line to read is that you don't have to feel guilty about not posting. (But thank you, Jen Brubacher, for caring.) Still, despite lacking a childhood steeped in Jewish or Catholic traditions, I seem to have an inborn sense of guilt. *SIGH*

So here I am, passing on a link to the New York Times review of Robert McCrum's book about the way English is taking over the globe (Globish: How the English Language Became the World's Language, Norton, $26.95). I love watching language morph and bend, even as I rail against textspeak and people who don't know that one exclamation point is really all you need. If you can be objective about it--right, I know, I can't--it's fascinating to learn how English is spoken both in Buckingham Palace (where we hope, dear God, they've got it right) and in South Korea (where a hybrid strain is known as Konglish) and in Malaysia (Manglish). But why is it that Konglish seems charming while textspeak is cringeworthy?

Maybe it's because American English is the prophet in its own country, to my mind. Familiarity breeds contempt. (Feel free to insert your own cliche here.) I live in the American Midwest, home to some of the laziest speakers on the planet. (No, no, Kansas farmers: You're incredibly hardworking. Put the pitchfork down.) I mean that the Midwestern pronunciation is lazy. One can speak Midwestern without hardly opening one's mouth. The vowels are flat, the consonants fuzzy, the word endings mumbled. When we learn other languages in school, we have to be taught to appreciate the musicality, the subtle tonal differences, of our language. We have to work at it. I have no research to back this up, but I would presume that people who speak more precisely pronounced tongues, like French, have an easier time learning to make the different sounds of other languages. (Though granted, French speakers have a devilish time learning to speak Midwestern English. They can't seem to swallow half the sounds as we do.)

We grow up here, isolationist, unwilling to consider that other folks in other parts of the world not only speak English differently, but possibly other languages altogether. I apologize in advance to fellow Midwesterners who might read the blog. Of course it isn't true of all of us, and it's a natural result of living in the middle of a large, self-serving nation. But while the spread of English makes my life a lot easier, I weep just a little too. It wouldn't kill us--English speakers, Midwesterners, Americans--to have to learn someone else's lingo for a change.

Think about that the next time you're put on hold when someone says, “Para continuar en español, marque el dos.”