Product Description
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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Amazon.com
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
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 AMAZING READ
This is an incredible book and I'd recommend it to anyone. It should be made into a movie. Amazing and captivating from start to finish. WOW!!!
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Fell in love with this one.
Water for Elephants has recently taken over the spot of my favorite book. The book flawlessly alternates between the main character's present day experience in a nursing home and his memories of his life during his early 20's. I was skeptical about the switching at first since many books that do this are usually confusing and I have to keep turning back a few pages to see what time period I'm in, but the author does this perfectly.
I completely fell in love with the main character, both the 92 year old and 23 year old versions of him. As someone who works in a nursing home, his experiences were so realistic and the author captured this perfectly.
The book was extremely well written and it was obvious that Gruen did her research. I found myself looking for more information about travelling circuses and downloading pictures from them, especially elephants, after reading this.
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 Nice Read for Some, Maybe Not for Animal Lovers ( jmgwis )
I read this book because my sister-in-law (who never reads) could not put it down until she finished. So I gave it a go and, after a slow start, was interested enough to finish. The author does everything she can to exploit the reader's concern for cats, dogs, monkeys and, of course, the titular elephant. The narrator is a vet who sticks with the circus, at first, in order to protect the animals, but he does little to interfere with their mistreatment... or the mistreatment of his fellow humans. In that sense, the book rings false. The book exploits the reader's feeling for animals and animal-human relationships for some cheap emotional effect. And it worked on me to some extent because I cared about (and shed shed tears for) the animals much more than the humans. But I fail to see larger point.
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 "I worked for a circus, too - I carried water for elephants" ( docpeteterson )
I have strongly mixed feelings about _Water for Elephants_. The alternating story between the daily life of a 90-ish year old man and his cantankerous behaviour with his youth as a circus vet kept my attention; the details about the social heirarchy between members of the circus was (on the authority of a former circus roustabout friend of mine) accurate; and I have to admit, I am a sucker for a love story. However, as previous reviewers have noted, the 1930's vernacular, and the mannerisms of men of that era were abhorrent - but then I am a stickler for these kinds of detail.
The story - of a Cornell vet student who quits his final exams before graduation to join the circus and his subsequent adventures (and love story) has undoubtedly caught the imagination of the vast majority of Amazon reviewers - including myself. Yet I deduct a star because of the lack of attention to detail regarding the male protagonists and the verbage of the time. For most readers, this apparently isn't an issue, in which case I would stronlgy recommend it.
As far as breezy summer reads go, this certainly fits the bill - who *hasn't* fantasized about running off with the circus? (Happily oblivious to the hard work, long hours and mediocre pay ...) Which among us doesn't dream (or hasn't dreamed) of finding your soul-mate on such an adventure? Recommended, particularly for the romantics among us.
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Fun, escapist novel
Following a family tragedy, Jacob Jankowski abandons life as a college student, and instead of working as a veterinarian alongside his father, finds himself caring for animals in a traveling circus--the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. Jacob befriends numerous characters, from the glamorous performer Marlena, to the alcoholic Camel, who works setting up the circus, to the Benzini Brothers' star elephant, Rosie. As he travels between different castes of the circus and across America, Jacob narrates the triumphs and hardships experienced by the people and animals of the Great Depression-era attraction.
Interspersed throughout the novel are chapters that introduce the reader to the present-day, nonagenarian Jacob, as he laments his current living arrangement in a nursing home.
Despite several graphic descriptions of animal abuse and the cruelty displayed the novel's antagonists, the story is ultimately fun, escapist and sentimental, with an optimistic, if improbable, conclusion.
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