Our bookclub chose this one - and I can't wait for discussion tonight. This is a truly beautiful, lyrical book that will make you laugh one minute and rip your heart out the next.
The true story of the Warsaw Zoo and its part in the Polish underground during WWII, it's a fantastic story about a couple who gladly include both people and animals alike into their family and home.
The perspective ebbs and flows, back and forth from the general scene across the European theater to Poland's unique position, to Warsaw's part in the action and then to the smaller picture of the zoo and the everyday lives of the villa's inhabitants. This nicely allows a world perspective of the bigger picture, then humanizes it into something the reader can imagine and absorb.
I listened to part of this book on audio, then went back and read the whole thing in hardcover. I think because I listened to part of it, I really got a better picture of the poetic language used in the descriptions of the trees, landscape and animals. It's really well done - not overlong and distracting as I sometimes find this type of "scene setting."
I think the animal stories, and the perspective they add to the tale, make this a truly unique and approachable look at the Nazi invasion.
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