Water for Elephants | Sara Gruen | Astonishing Details

Water for Elephants | Sara Gruen | the life of a circus

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Water for Elephants

	Water for Elephants Sara Gruen Algonquin Books, 2006 - 335 pages average customer review:based on 3 reviews view larger image
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Astonishing Details

The descriptive language in this unbelievably well researched book is amazing. The story transports the reader onto a circus train. It might be easy to dismiss this as a story too odd to get interested in, but it's not. Just pick it up and find yourself lost.

the life of a circus

"Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen, © 2006

Ms. Gruen writes an odd story. It is really two stories in one. The main one is of an almost veterinarian, Jacob Jankowski, who becomes caught up in the life of a circus. It is a romance: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back (whoopee). In the afterword the author explains that she was wanting to do a story about the photographer of circus', but she got caught up in all the rest of the circus history and it became this book. It is worthy and good. The second is of the same man in a nursing home, or some such place, who sort of does not belong there. He has lived his life and remembers it well. The instigation is the circus has come to town!!
The chapters are defined by when is the story being told. Sometimes it is now: he is old and ornery; the next one, he is remembering his life in the circus. The value is in the perspective: as an old man, he has problems, but he deals with them, somewhat; as a young man he grows up and finds the love of his life. It is always wonderful to read a story of love growing and becoming the be all to end all. But real love is of the animals, horses, elephants, orangutans, chimpanzees and doing something constructive. In the end you feel that everything is wonderful and has come out all right.
The odd thing, like in some other places I have seen ("Passenger 54"), the title comes from out of the blue, once, and it is never explained or spoken of again.

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Fun Fiction About the Big Top of Yesteryear

Cleverly placed in the backdrop of the romantic but hard times of the Great Depression's wake [1931], this novel describes the weirder world in a stranger time in the not-so-common confines of a circus family.

Gruen found a topic and made it extremely fun to read. This reader likes stories, and the author either created or embellished great stories of circus folklore [reader Author's Note at end].

And, amid the story there is a common group of guys who are the comedy which hold the story together - otherwise it may be too depressing and too violent for some readers. The three eclectic characters are the foul-mouthed hard-tempered dwarf clown whose mother sold him to the circus, combined with the protagonist - a Cornell educated veterinarian, protagonist Jacob Jankowski., who falls into emotionally hard times - and the old man of the circus family whose overindulgence of jake makes him become a victim of the paralyzing Jake Walk Effect, as him limbs wither along with his mind from the chemical's destructive forces. Each with his emotional or physical scars, enlightens the others with dry wit and warm compassion as each struggles to continue to live on the circus train where many mornings are greeted with discoveries of losses of others from "red lightings" - those who are not economically valuable to the "family" are thrown off the train while in transit at the latest of hours.

Amid many stereotypical characters - aren't most circus characters stereoptyped by this time? - is the greatest monster of them all: a paranoid schizophrenic Jew named August. A love triangle grows between August, his lovely wife Marlena and Jacob. Things get out of hand and at one time the author has Jacob think, "It occurs to me that my conscience stopped me from killing August at the very moment someone was attempting to carry out his orders to kill me." "Prizzi's Honor" meets the big top.
If there is any criticism of this book, it is not anything extraordinary. Some of the dialogue was not totally sharp, but few writers can write great dialogue. Dialogue is the hardest task of any fiction writer. This dialogue is very good. Just not great.

I also take my hat off to her delivery of the story through a young man's eyes. His feelings about women, his feelings about anger, and other items delivered through this book are not reflective of the author's gender. That accomplishment always amazes me and may amaze you as well.

This book is good for trips or beach outings. This is a fun book to read. I like fun novels. I read for fun. I like this novel.

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