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Water for Elephants: A Novel
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9781565125605
ISBN: 1565125606
Label: Algonquin Books
Manufacturer: Algonquin Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 350
Publication Date: April 09, 2007
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Studio: Algonquin Books
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Editorial Review:
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
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.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - A Winner!
This novel was an adventure that never got bogged down or boring. It was simply the best novel I've ever read. A three ring circus that kept the reader enchanted from beginning to end with characters that were fascinating
Rating: - Something for everyone!
This tale flips back and forth from an elderly man's plight at a nursing home to his memories of his days as a vet for a depression era circus. Both stories are richly detailed, well told and make you ache in your bones with compassion for the characters. I couldn't put it down!
Rating:  - Not bad, but...
The book wasn't bad, but the plot was entirely predictable and uninspiring, and the character development was feeble at best. Simply caricatures and cardboard cutouts, acting exactly as their stereotypes would suggest.
Definitely not a total waste of time, as it's clear the author did her research, but it definitely failed to grab me.
Rating:  - Great!
This book has been on the periphery of my "to read" list - I delayed reading it because it seemed to be a mainstream favorite (which I tend to avoid). The characters were interesting, complex, and often surprising. I found myself totally engrossed and could not put it down!
Rating: - The real show happens offstage...
Jacob Jankowski is ninety years old -- or maybe he's ninety-three; he doesn't remember. However, he does remember a very interesting part of his life. It comes about one day when the news that a circus is in town and one of Jacob's fellow nursing home inmates brags about having worked at a circus and giving water to the elephants. Jacob knows the old man is full of it. After all, Jacob once worked at a circus. Rewind seventy-something years, to the 1930s, amid the Great Depression. Jacob is ... Read More
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