BOOK REVIEW: Water For Elephants

The “Best Seller” list gets to be little a boring. I read the books listed and notice the same old names each week. The fact that the same authors appear so frequently makes me suspicious. It is hard to be that prolific without losing some originality.

That is why when I do find a favorite author; I feel that I have met an old friend. Sara Gruen is an old friend. Her WATER FOR ELEPHANTS is one of my all time favorite books and it is at the top of the Trade Paper Best Seller list again. I am guessing that the fact that the movie will be coming out is the reason for the new interest. Because it is still on my Best That I Have Read list, I want to remind you why I liked it so much.

The narrator of WATER FOR ELEPHANTS is either ninety or ninety-two. He tells us that age is not as important as it was when he was younger. He has not really forgotten, just lost track. From his wheelchair in the nursing home he watches a circus set up across the parking lot. This starts the story of how he became a part of a traveling circus in his youth.

Jacob Jankowaski is about to take his final exams at Cornell and then join his father’s veterinary practice. This is during the Great Depression and at the sudden death of his parents he finds that there is no business for him to join.

From this point Jacob takes us into the world that adopts him, a world of freaks, glamour, sleaze, and unusual friendships. Jacob is an innocent, by his own word, “the oldest male virgin on the face of the earth.” The tough, hardened people of the circus do not accept him at first and life becomes a fast lesson in survival. Along the way he makes friends with an old man who has become paralyzed from drinking “jake”. This is a time of illegal booze and not all of what is available is safe.

Once it is discovered that Jacob has some training and skill with sick animals, his place in this tight society is established. The animal trainer, August, and his wife, Marlena, take Jacob under their wing. We watch as August becomes more and more unstable and as a relationship develops between Marlena and Jacob.

The story is full of interesting characters. Each is richly developed although none is as fascinating as Rosie. Rosie is large, gray, very wrinkled, and difficult to train. Her former owners gave up on using her in an elephant act because they felt that she was too stupid. When we learn that she has been using her trunk to pull up the stake holding her, stealing the lemonade, and then returning the stake in the ground, we get an idea of how intelligent Rosie is. In fact, she is a large part of the plot of the book.

Gruen based her facts on old photographs and interviews with circus people. The book is full of actual pictures that add to “seeing” the characters. In the interview with the author Gruen explains that many of the incidents were based on fact---including the lemonade stealing scene.

This is an excellent read. The feel for the Depression as well as for the gritty life of a traveling circus is well done. Here we have dark secrets which involve a murder or two, a love story, and a very large, mute heroine. It also has an ending that I absolutely loved.

Read WATER FOR ELEPHANTS. We can never depend on Hollywood to get it right.