Water for Elephants had been in y reading pile for at least three years. I just couldn’t get excited about it, despite the glowing reviews. However, with the moving coming out last week, I knew I had to read it if I was going to. Now, I wish I hadn’t waited so long.
Jacob Jankowski, in his 90s, is living in an “old folks home.” He battles the nurses regularly for trying to take away the few pleasures he has left, like a decent meal. When a circus comes to town, and sets up down the street from Jacob’s home, he begins to recall his own experience with the circus.
At the height of the Great Depression, Jacob was finishing his degree in veterinary medicine at Cornell when he received word that his parents had been killed in an auto accident. Returning home to bury them, he discovers that the bank is seizing his father’s veterinary business along with their home and all of their belongings. Jacob attempts to return to school and take his final exams, but finds himself unable to concentrate. Instead he leaves college and hops what he believes to be a freight train. It turns out to be a circus train, and Jacob joins the Benzini Brothers circus as the staff veterinarian even though he keeps telling them that he never took his final exams.
Through his experiences with the circus, Jacob learns about friendship, love, and compassion, along with brutality, greed, and a callous disregard for life. Gruen creates a cast of characters that will stay with you long after you finish the book. The brief, but graphic scenes of sex and violence in Water for Elephants will keep it from being on the shelves of most school libraries, but it is a shame. This book is beautifully written, disturbing, redemptive, and haunting.
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