Water for Elephants: A Novel
 | By Sara Gruen Algonquin Books, 2007, Paperback Customer Rating: 1980 reviews Recommend |
|---|
- ISBN13: 9781565125605
- Condition: New
- Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
As a young man, Jacob Jankowski was tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. It was the early part of the great Depression, and for Jacob, now ninety, the circus world he remembers was both his salvation and a living hell. A veterinary student just shy of a degree, he was put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It was there that he met Marlena, the beautiful equestrian star married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. And he met Rosie, an untrainable elephant who was the great gray hope for this third-rate traveling show. The bond that grew among this unlikely trio was one of love and trust, and, ultimately, it was their only hope for survival.
Jacob Jankowski says: "I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other." At the beginning of Water for Elephants, he is living out his days in a nursing home, hating every second of it. His life wasn't always like this, however, because Jacob ran away and joined the circus when he was twenty-one. It wasn't a romantic, carefree decision, to be sure. His parents were killed in an auto accident one week before he was to sit for his veterinary medicine exams at Cornell. He buried his parents, learned that they left him nothing because they had mortgaged everything to pay his tuition, returned to school, went to the exams, and didn't write a single word. He walked out without completing the test and wound up on a circus train. The circus he joins, in Depression-era America, is second-rate at best. With Ringling Brothers as the standard, Benzini Brothers is far down the scale and pale by comparison.
Water for Elephants is the story of Jacob's life with this circus. Sara Gruen spares no detail in chronicling the squalid, filthy, brutish circumstances in which he finds himself. The animals are mangy, underfed or fed rotten food, and abused. Jacob, once it becomes known that he has veterinary skills, is put in charge of the "menagerie" and all its ills. Uncle Al, the circus impresario, is a self-serving, venal creep who slaps people around because he can. August, the animal trainer, is a certified paranoid schizophrenic whose occasional flights into madness and brutality often have Jacob as their object. Jacob is the only person in the book who has a handle on a moral compass and as his reward he spends most of the novel beaten, broken, concussed, bleeding, swollen and hungover. He is the self-appointed Protector of the Downtrodden, and... he falls in love with Marlena, crazy August's wife. Not his best idea.
The most interesting aspect of the book is all the circus lore that Gruen has so carefully researched. She has all the right vocabulary: grifters, roustabouts, workers, cooch tent, rubes, First of May, what the band plays when there's trouble, Jamaican ginger paralysis, life on a circus train, set-up and take-down, being run out of town by the "revenooers" or the cops, and losing all your hooch. There is one glorious passage about Marlena and Rosie, the bull elephant, that truly evokes the magic a circus can create. It is easy to see Marlena's and Rosie's pink sequins under the Big Top and to imagine their perfect choreography as they perform unbelievable stunts. The crowd loves it — and so will the reader. The ending is absolutely ludicrous and really quite lovely. — Valerie Ryan
Title: Water for Elephants: A Novel
Sales Rank: 121 in Books
Author: Sara Gruen
Publisher: Algonquin Books, 2007-04-09, Paperback, 350 pages, ISBN: 1565125606
Package Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches, 0.9 pounds
- Good book, but light
- I enjoyed this book, but I thought it was light on plot and character development. I purchased it based on the numerous 5-star ratings that it received from Amazon readers. I expected it to be more - did not dislike it, but wouldn't recommend it to reader's who want more from a book.… More reviews
- Still living with the characters days after reading this book
- I read this book at a very busy time of my life, when I had only about haft of a month to finish my MS degree of Chemistry (something related to "water":) No regret at all about spending 1 day to finish reading! Love it, love the characters, love the elephant :)
And, the book became an excellent bedtime story for my husband, who doesn't like (and doesn't have… More reviews
- A Fabulous Odyssey from Times Gone By....
- I come here to write this review, of course, "very late"....and so, perhaps many will not read what I have to say about this book.
Being an avid reader, with interests all over the "map" so to speak, I have read God-Knows-How-Many stories in my 62+ years. Some deeply moving, others barely creating or leaving the slightest ripple in my conscious brain. Some,… More reviews
- Simply a really great story
- I loved this book from beginning to end. Along with some entertaining history, this is a beautifully woven tale. To my mind, a good novel has unexpected twists and surprises .. and this book carried one beautiful surprise all the way through.
This book stirred in me an affection for elephants that I hadn't felt since childhood. Along with The Magician's… More reviews
- Didn't know I liked it until I finished reading...
- While I recommend this book, the slow up-start did little to urge me further. However, by the time the key players are in place, the plot picks up and makes for a fascinating love story with a gritty kick. My only real complaint is that the main character felt foreign to me throughout the book, but he seems to come into his own by the… More reviews
