Water for Elephants: A Novel
by Sara Gruen
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Book Summary Information
Author: Sara GruenEdition: Paperback
Published: 2007-04-09
ISBN: 1565125606
Number of pages: 350
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Book Reviews of Water for Elephants: A Novel
Book Review: 1/2 step above Grisham
Summary: 2 Stars
This book had very, very little depth. I too am shocked at the number of 5-star reviews, the "guaranteed-you-won't-be-disappointed", "fantastic-read"-type hype. It was light, entertatining fluff, yes, but certainly NOT for everybody, NOT great literature, and certainly had no deep, enduring themes that stay with you and haunt you for weeks (as 'Kite Runner' did for me).
First of all, the comments about the intriguing setting and novel characters were correct. It was an intriguing setting, with novel characters. There. Now onto the problems.
The whole storyline felt distinctly soap-opera-ish, due in part to the dialogue and the shallow writing. The characters had no depth whatsoever, very similarly written to Dan Brown or John Grisham's endless recycled characters. Looking back on those books (I'll bet you've read more than one from each author, haven't you? Come on, admit it), do you remember the characters themselves as distinctive? No -- they were two-dimensional cutouts caught up in dramatic plots. This is the exact same thing. E.g. excerpt: "She presses her face to my chest. 'Oh, Jacob--what are we going to do?' "
Which brings me to my next criticism: the dialogue comes across as very contrived and Grisham-ish. Lots of people saying the listener's name. LOTS of it. Small nitpick, but it's one of those things that just doesn't ring true.
Example: "Come on, Jacob" says Earl, taking hold of my upper arm. "The boss wants you to move along".
"Give me just a second, Earl," I say.
My other criticism, which I haven't seen mentioned here, was the distinctly modern and politically correct sensibilities of the protagonist(s) which came through somewhat anachronistically. E.g., protagonist Jacob is dramatically indignant at the husband who beat his wife. It was just too cartoon-characterish to me, too black and white. Good guy, who has the delicate sensibility to be incensed at the injustices he sees around him; and the bad guys: wife beater and profit-monger.
This could EASILY be adapted to a Disney movie. Easily. If you want a read that is thought provoking and that will stay with you for awhile, skip this one. If you want a beach read, yeah, go ahead, I'll give it beach-read status.
Summary of Water for Elephants: A Novel
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.
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