Books : Water for Elephants: A Novel

Rating: - You'll want to run away and join the circus, too!
90-ish Jacob Jankowski narrates his story in flashbacks from a nursing home. His days with the circus feel more real and alive to him than his current reality.

After his parents are killed in a car accident, Jacob runs out on his vet school exams and joins the circus. Circus life is not always easy, but Jacob has experiences with humans and animals that change his life forever.

Gruen brings the Depression-era circus vividly to life, along with its many colorful characters. If Rosie the elephant and Bobo the orangutan don't touch your heart, it's made of stone!

Highly recommended!

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Rating: - Book Club Read
Excellent read. It has been a long time since I picked up a book that I could not put down. The author is a wonderful story teller. He was able to include many thought provoking social issues into what might be considered a light read.

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Rating: - A new book for my favorites shelf
I accidentally stumbled upon this book at the book store in an airport. I began reading it during my lay over and it was hard to put down during a very important and busy trip. I finished it within days after returning home (once again filling my airport/plane time with reading).

I loved the combination of mystery, passion, action, humor, tears, humans and animals Sara Gruen has put in this book. It is the kind of book that leaves you speechless when you finish it and you wonder if you should just continue to read it over and over again because the next few books won't even come close to being as wonderful. It was a bittersweetness to read the last few pages as it meant it was the end.

I haven't found anything since that captured me the way "Water for Elephants" did. "Water for Elephants" is going to remain on the favorites shelf for a long, long time.

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Rating: - One of the best books I've read
I finished this book in three days. It's really hard to put it down. I like the plot all throughout the book. The sweet romance and suspense kept me reading on and on. I was a bit disappointed with the ending.

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Rating: - Very good reading
If you ever read circus books when you were a kid, you'd enjoy this one (well, even if you did not, you may still enjoy this book.) The meticulous research on the book results in an interesting panorama of circus life where class divisions (i.e., performers don't sit with the roustabouts, clowns don't share their train car with others, etc.) eventually lead to internecine warfare at the end of the book. There is also jealousy, a three-way love triangle, prohibition, and oh yes, animal husbandry and abuse. The picture the book paints of a prohibition-era circus train is vivid: smuggled moonshine from Canada, various misfits that magically come together during under the big top, the behind-the-barn striptease shows that went on in such circuses (funny, no one told me about that part when I was a kid reading about circus books!) The namesake of the book is Rosie, the elephant that apparently only understands Polish. Until that little nugget is unearthed, Rosie regularly receives the brutal end of a bullhook. The only person between the bullhook and Rosie is the protagonist, Jacob Jankowski, who suddenly finds himself ripped from an Ivy League university to a circus train when his parents die in an accident. Fortunately, Jacob was studying to be a veterinarian and was only one examination shy of a degree. But that does not matter to Uncle Al, the reprehensible circus owner who never saw the back of a head he could not hit. The book has a 98-year old Jacob in contemporary settings reminiscing about his early life in the circus. Jacob's "escape" back to a circus towards the end was a bit preposterous, I must admit. But besides that, the book makes for a very interesting reading.