A Review of “Water for Elephants” by Sara Gruen

One has to start somewhere and I’ve already spent a couple of days putting it off. I said in my last post that I was going to read more and I was going to use the NY Times List of Bestsellers to help make my selections. I picked “Water for Elephants” because a friend had previously recommended the author. I had no idea what the story was but when I saw it on the list I immediately went to my Amazon account and downloaded a copy to my Kindle. I think the Kindle or any related type reading device is one of the greatest inventions of the century so far. One has only so much shelf space and really with the weight and baggage restrictions when traveling it only makes sense. Last year when I was passing through Europe on my way home from Malta I ran out of reading materiel and I was just amazed that I could select, buy and download a copy of “The Swan Thieves” by Elizabeth Kostova right there in the Zurich airport without even getting out of my seat.

 

But I digress. Let us talk about “Water for Elephants” by Sara Gruen.

 

When I began the novel I was a bit confused. The author chose to begin with an action scene that seemed to belong elsewhere. Then she skipped seventy years into the future. I was a little lost and a little confused and not a little disappointed. I thought I was going read a story of love and adventure and instead I find myself in a nursing home. I’m not exactly young myself and reading about what I have to look forward to isn’t something I want to do. I almost set the book down and began to consider how I could have more profitably spent that $7 dollars the E-Book cost me but I said “What the Hell”. The moneys been spent, I have the book, I DID promise myself I’d read a bestseller so I plodded on. I was happy I did. Although I wasn’t very pleased with hearing about life in some midwestern old folks home and what was being served for dinner, I did continue and by the second chapter we were back in 1932 and hearing of Jacob Jankowski’s life and situation. Here was a real person, the same one who was going to grow old and become the fellow in chapter one, but for now he was young and on his own with all his faculties and all his strength and all his weaknesses.

 

The main story revolves around the traveling circuses of the Depression Era and the author has certainly done her research well. As she described the character of some of the circus folk, from the executives to performers to the simple souls who did the physical labor of setting up the tents and mucking out the animal cars, one got a real sense of being there. The ambitions, cruelty, failings and other vices of most of the characters, including our hero, is so well portrayed that I began to wonder if I ever wanted to go the circus again. The descriptions of places and travel and the simple acts of setting up and tearing down the traveling show certainly made me feel like I was there along with those workmen. The story certainly passed the smell test.

 

Let me explain. I love movies. When I was in my late twenties I thought I should expand my mind and experiences. I was too frightened to do drugs so I chose to become sophisticated and cool by going to foreign films. There were a couple of theaters in Grosse Pointe called The Punch and Judy and The Esquire that would show those films during the week. One of the films I saw was Wolfgang Peterson’s “Das Boot” about submarine warfare during the Second World War. Some of the scenes were so realistic I though I could actually “smell” the sweat on the men and stink of diesel fuel in the very air of the theater. Ever since then, when I see or read a story that is so real and lifelike I can “smell” it, I know I’ve found a great work.

 

I don’t want to retell the story here and steal any of the author’s thunder but I feel I must give Ms. Gruen credit for presenting a world so completely realistic and a story that could be so true that I am eagerly looking forward to reading more of her work. Like I said before, I was feeling a little disappointed when I began the book but I was very, very pleased that I stuck with it past the first few chapters. I’d say its well worth the time spent.