Water for Elephants: A Novel

Author - Sara Gruen ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Paperback Book item from Algonquin Books was reviewed on 11-Aug-2008.

Search ISBN:1565125606 offer from Abebooks or used books from Alibris. Water for Elephants: A Novel Reference Book. Classifications : Contemporary Literature & Fiction Subjects Books Literary Literature & Fiction Subjects Books Paperback Mass Market Trade Binding (binding) Refinements Books Printed Books Format (feature_browse-bin) . Click the following link to view the cover of Water for Elephants: A Novel.

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1) Paperback Book Water for Elephants: A Novel by Algonquin Books. If you are going to read about elephants, Sara Gruen is the perdect author. Here we are introduced to Rosie the elephant who is being used by a circus that is down on its luck during the depression to regain some measure of credibility. But quickly into the tale we learn that the lovable Rosie has no interest in following any commands given by her trainer. And who would? The director of the side show is cruel and callous and abusive...not only to the animals of the circus, but to his family. But Water for elephants is more than that. We also meet Jacob, a lonely boy who works at the circus. There is the story of the director´s wife Marlena and let´s not forget Rosie. This is a wonderfully, well-written tale about life under the three rings during the depression. I´d also highly recommend reading The Fates by Georgiou Tino for those who may have missed it. The Fates (classic)¤

2) Paperback Book Water for Elephants: A Novel by Algonquin Books. Fantastic prose that will pull you in from page one. If I´d only read this before my own attempt to join the circus!¤

3) Paperback Book Water for Elephants: A Novel by Algonquin Books. The story generated lots of good discussion. The juxtiposition of the main character in youth and old age benefited both story lines, neither of which would have been as compelling without the other.¤

4) Paperback Book Water for Elephants: A Novel by Algonquin Books. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. An amazing story, told in an intriguing style - I could not put it down!¤

5) Paperback Book Water for Elephants: A Novel by Algonquin Books. I saw this book in the bookstore and it sounded very interesting so I got it out of the library. I wasn´t disappointed. It was very easy to read and flowed nicely. Very interesting and quirky characters which I liked. Rosie the elephant was a great character. I agree with one of the other reviewers who compared the book to Sophies Choice. I thought the same thing when we meet the ringmaster. I really enjoyed the book but I was disappointed that there were a couple of parts that were unnecessarily crude (as opposed to necessarily crude?). It´s like the female writer of the book had to prove that she could be as crude as any man. Other than that, it was one of my favourite books this year.¤

6) Paperback Book Water for Elephants: A Novel by Algonquin Books. 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.¤

7) Paperback Book Water for Elephants: A Novel by Algonquin Books. 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¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 8-Sep-2008, 15651256069781565125605, 830-910-440-150-061-191-8

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