In a long list of critical praise on the first four pages of the paperback edition for Water For Elephants, The Chicago Tribune is quoted as saying... (show more)
In a long list of critical praise on the first four pages of the paperback edition for Water For Elephants, The Chicago Tribune is quoted as saying the novel is “so compelling, so detailed and vivid, that I couldn’t bear to be torn away from it for a single minute”.
My sentiments exactly.
Water For Elephants is one of the most engrossing novels I’ve read so far this year (another is Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns) and now that I have finished it in what seemed a whirlwind of time (I stay at home with two small children and I still read it in three days!), Sara Gruen is among my list of favorite authors. I look forward to the debut of her fourth novel Ape House scheduled to be released in October of this year.
The Canadian-American author doesn’t waste any time putting the reader in suspense. The novel starts off smack dab in the midst of a cacophonous stampede of circus animals (lions and tigers and bears, oh my!) and someone’s impending doom. Want to find out what happened? Read the book and I’ll guarantee you won’t stop ‘til you reach the end. The engrossing tale is told in flashbacks from the mind of Jacob Jankowski, a man who is encroaching the end of his life at an impressive ninety years of age (“…or ninety-three. One or the other.”). Jacob resides at an assisted living facility and is the consummate old fart, crotchety and bitter about the black void of his current living. It isn’t until word that the circus is coming to town that something inside of him stirs and memories of his youth from the furthest recesses of his mind float to the murky surface.
We are suddenly thrust into the past at the inception of the Great Depression. Jacob is twenty-three and a student in his final year at Cornell University working towards a degree in veterinary sciences when he is pulled out of class one day in 1931 to earth-shattering news – his parents are dead after a sudden and fatal car accident. Left with little to fall back on, Jacob takes a short leave and returns to school to finish out the year but his grief over the loss of his mother and father shadows his professional goals and he walks out in the middle of his final test, the integral exam that will earn him his degree. Having committed career suicide, Jacob goes walking aimlessly for an entire afternoon and inexplicably jumps a passing train in the night. Little does he know that this one small act has just changed his entire future.
After being roughed up by a car full of “working men”, Jacob learns that he has just boarded the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth (“You done landed yer ass on a circus, boy”), a big top rivaling the Ringling Brothers and headed by tyrannical ringmaster Alan Bunkel, dubbed “Uncle Al”. It isn’t until he lets loose that he’s a Cornell-educated vet that he gets placed in the menagerie working with all the animals, in particular a bull elephant named Rosie. Jacob grows fond of Rosie as well as the other animals but his heart really belongs to a woman named Marlena, a resplendent young performer who is inconveniently married to an emotionally unstable man named August, the equestrian director and superintendent of animals. As Jacob’s love for Marlena grows, so too does his hatred of August as he watches him grow ever more suspicious and ever more brutal. His violent streak spills over onto Rosie, who is rumored to be “dumb as rocks” and disobedient ever since she was acquired and August makes her pay for her insubordination with recurrent vicious floggings.
To make matters worse, Uncle Al constantly shafts his workers and performers by docking and/or refraining to pay them for their work and when someone’s authority is unduly challenged, people mysteriously disappear in the dead of night. Jacob’s unwavering morals suddenly pit him in a dangerous situation and with a love triangle rapidly brewing and a wild animal reaching its breaking point, the thunder will crack loud and hard before the storm.
The book flits back and forth between the past and present and the transition is fluid – there is no confusion between the youthful Jacob and his ninety-year old self. The descriptions of the circus are vivid, particularly the behavior of the animals within the menagerie. Being an avid supporter of numerous animal and wildlife charities, this isn’t a surprise coming from Gruen and it’s some very interesting character development indeed.
Her human counterparts in the story don’t suffer from this, thankfully. Jacob is a well-written character, the youthful version brimming with naivete and conviction and the older of course wiser but still resolute as ever. Gruen shows with Jacob that even after the utmost disastrous of events that time can reign down upon a life, some things about our character ultimately never change. The unpredictability of August is also queerly fascinating – with expertly written passages of steely smiles, cold gazes and passive-aggressive undertones, the reader will feel just as perplexed and wary of him as Jacob does.
Along with extensive research on the subject of circuses during the Depression, Gruen included 17 black-and-white archival photos of circuses throughout the 1930’s; the photos are prominently featured at the beginning of about every other chapter and lend the story some great visuals to feed upon.
Bottom Line: A superb novel, well worth the time and money to read. With a movie deal in the works, pick it up now before the film adaptation spoils it in either the best or worst way. (show less)
