BR: Water for Elephants (Sara Gruen)

Amazon Link: Water for Elephants

I longed to read this book for almost a year, leaving it on my wish list in the hope that I could pick up a cheap second-hand copy somewhere. But that was not to be so. I finally took the plunge and paid full price when the book came up on a book club reading list, a book club I was thinking of joining. I read the book, enjoyed it, but didn’t go along to the club meeting. I’m an introvert, what can I say!?

I wish I could say I adored this book, that it was worth the months of waiting, of longing for it, of dreaming of reading it, but it wasn’t and that’s not the book's fault, nor the writer, but rather the reality that something sought for so long, once achieved will rarely meet its imagined ideal. Having said that though, the book is enjoyable, well researched, disturbing in places (animal abuse) and has a happy ending for the main characters, not so much for some of the smaller players (no pun intended).

The story starts in a nursing home where Jacob Jankowski is being treated as an old man – which he is. He’s ninety, or ninety three, he can’t remember. The mushy tasteless food that he and the other ‘inmates’ are fed, irks him, as does the requirement to be pushed around in a wheelchair, forced to co-exist with drooling, staring ‘vegetables’ and treated as though he is a mindless child. To say he is recalcitrant is an understatement. If he were more able bodied, he’d be dangerous.

The story is told in flashbacks, memories Jacob has in between experiences in the nursing home. As a young man, Jacob joined the circus, an accidental encounter that nearly saw him thrown from the train he had jumped upon. When asked by the circus hands what he was running from, he says little, but he isn’t running from anything, all he had and hoped for was lost when his parents died in a car accident. His father, a kindly small town veterinarian, more or less gave away all that his family owned through caring for sick animals and accepting no payment in return. Until the death of his parents, Jacob was at Cornwell University studying to be a vet. He intended to work with his father, but that is not to be so. With no money, and in the midst of the American depression, Jacob’s options are gravely limited.

Aboard the circus train, he finds himself among a band of misfits who have segregated themselves into hierarchical bands, a dysfunctional class system where belonging to one subset demands certain behaviour and ignorance of all the other subsets. Jacob is a kindly soul and this does not sit well with him, especially when the lower classes of people are treated with contempt by those who are considered above them.

However, his veterinary training affords him some freedom and respect, though it isn’t enough to save him from painful run-ins with August, a certified paranoid schizophrenic whose wife, Marlena, Jacob (unfortunately) falls in love with.

The story is rich with circus life, the squalid, brutal, unseen side that is painstakingly kept from public view. By far the most disturbing practice is that of ‘red-lighting’. That is the term used when people are thrown from the train as it nears a railroad siding (a red light), thus giving them the opportunity to scramble away and potentially avoid serious injury or death. When times become exceptionally hard, and Jacob’s interest in Marlena is suspected, he is targeted for red-lighting. He is spared by being elsewhere, but two of his friends, a pair of vulnerable individuals who Jacob had been protecting, are not so lucky. Their fate is chilling, as is the treatment of the animals, in particular an elephant named Rosie which Jacob does his best to protect, but does not always succeed in doing so.

Though the book has a happy ending (a little too 'happy', if you ask me, but that's a minor complaint), there are parts that made me angry and sad, and it taught me much about circus life for a less than stellar outfit. This book really did earn the notoriety it gained, and my inability to give it a higher rating is due to my having known too much about it before I started reading. That’s not the book’s fault.

Despite some minor disappointment, it was worth the wait and the read. It is nicely paced, well written, superbly researched and all the characters come to life. Jacob is likeable, consistently portrayed and a character that it's hard not to care for. I'd have preferred the story to have been told in present time, being Jacob's experiences in the circus during the depression. I felt that having him in the nursing home, telling his story in flash-backs, took away some of the tension that might otherwise have been there during the times he was in peril. Afterall, it's dificult to be afraid for someone when you know they live to be 90 (or 93).

Still, it's a good read and I'll readily recommend it to others.

Rating **** out of five.