Friday Book Report: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Sara Gruen’s novel, Water For Elephants takes the reader back in time when travelling circus’ arrived on trains, and any and everything went on to make the show a success.  It was published in 2006 by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

Jacob Jankowski was just days away from taking his final exams and graduating Cornell with a veterinary degree when he learns that his parents have died in a car accident.  Grief stricken, Jacob returns home to identify their body and settle their estate; the problem is there is no estate to settle.  The Jankowski’s were late on their mortage payments and therefore the bank has taken over.  Jacob is left with nothing.  He returns to school to finish his exams, but instead he walks out of the classroom and wanders through the night before finally jumping on a train intent to roll away from this life and start over.  It isn’t until the next day he realizes he’s jumped on the train of the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth.  A travelling circus.  With his almost degree as a veterinarian, he finds work with the show caring for the menagerie of animals.  Jacob also finds Marlena, the beautiful equestrian star and his life is never the same again.

With all the fuss involving this book, I was very hopeful when reading.  Sadly, I came away disappointed.  This book had so much potential and it just fell short, in my opinion.  I was intrigued with the story and the inner workings of a third-rate travelling circus, but I couldn’t connect with the characters.  Oh, there’s definitely a lot of action and it does get you to turn the pages, but once the pages are turned all you’re left with is just a book loaded with filler and no real depth.  It felt like all those action and suspense sequences took away from what should have been the real story, and it distracted me from trying to focus on Jacob and Marlena.  It’s a book filled with animal cruelty, human cruelty, murder, lust, explicit sexual encounters, and one circus catastrophe after another, and I thought all of that combined were just added for shock value and most of the times weren’t necessary to the overall plot of the book.  There’s no story or character development.  It’s incident after horrible incident and after a while I as a reader become numb and emotionless to all that was going on.

This is supposed to be a story about Jacob and Marlena and how they’re able to come together after all those obstacles aforementioned, and yet we don’t get any real dialogue between them so it’s hard to understand just how their relationship progresses from friendship to love.  Instead it’s brief conversations and simple explanations as to why they suddenly become attracted to one another.  Another beef I had is that August, Marlena’s husband, is so dastardly and cruel you don’t want to like him at all.  Yet, the author decides to give him a medical condition as an excuse for his behavior towards animals and humans alike.  Just make him bad, there’s no reason to justify his actions with illness.  You want him to be the villain so make him a villain, don’t make him into someone you kinda feel like you need feel sorry for.

This book flashes back from past to present, with a cranky old Jacob reliving his time with the Benzini Brothers while stuck in an assisted living home.  That would have been fine except I wish he was telling this story to someone, instead of reminiscing on his own.  There is a reason that ninety-something Jacob is in this book, and it becomes prevalent at the end, I just wish it was more of a “storytelling” prose instead of the clumsy first person narrative we get. 

The one bright spot in this book for me was Rosie, the charming pachyderm that wiggles into your heart after just one meeting.  I thought of all the characters, she was the most deftly explained and had the most emotion and development.  The scenes describing her performance with Marlena were the best part of the book for me.  There wasn’t much else I really liked about this book, but I did enjoy any scene that Rosie was in.  She was enchanting and if not for her, this book would’ve been one big bust for me.

After reading the book, I decided I’d watch the movie starring Reese Witherspoon.  I think I like the movie version better, even though I didn’t really love the movie either.  At least the characters of Jacob and Marlena talked to each other and had some real scenes together.  The animal cruelty and explict scenes were edited down to a PG-13 rating and it didn't feel like it was in your face the entire time (which is how I felt reading the book) and really only took up brief sections of the movie. 

I know a lot of people really loved this book, but it was not for me.  I never connected to any of the characters, the multiple shocking and horrible events thrust in throughout the book annoyed me, and I was frustrated that Jacob and Marlena’s story was never fully developed. I really wanted to like this book, and I really tried to like it, but for me, this book only gets about a C grade.  There’s a lot of harsh language, horrible animal cruelty, violence and explicitly graphic sexual encounters…this is not a book for teens.   Perhaps I’m just too picky, but Water For Elephants was a chore to get through and more often than not, I found myself hoping that this show would not go on.