Water for Elephants (Thorndike Paperback Bestsellers)

Jacob was there because his luck had run out—orphaned and penniless, he had no direction until he landed on this locomotive "ship of fools." It was the early part of the Great Depression, and everyone in this third-rate circus was lucky to have any job at all. Memories of himself as a young man, tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, was there because she fell in love with the wrong man, a handsome circus boss with a wide mean streak. Surprising, poignant, and funny, Water for Elephants is that rare novel with a story so engrossing, one is reluctant to put it down; with characters so engaging, they continue to live long after the last page has been turned; with a world built of wonder, a world so real, one starts to breathe its air. The bond that grew among this unlikely trio was one of love and trust, and ultimately, it was their only hope for survival. The world of the circus: to Jacob it was both salvation and a living hell. Though he may not speak of them, the memories still dwell inside Jacob Jankowski's ninety-something-year-old mind. And Rosie the elephant was there because she was the great gray hope, the new act that was going to be the salvation of the circus; the only problem was, Rosie didn't have an act—in fact, she couldn't even follow instructions. Memories of a world filled with freaks and clowns, with wonder and pain and anger and passion; a world with its own narrow, irrational rules, its own way of life, and its own way of death.

His parents were killed in an auto accident one week before he was to sit for his veterinary medicine exams at Cornell. It wasn't a romantic, carefree decision, to be sure. 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. 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. Jacob Jankowski says: "I am ninety. The animals are mangy, underfed or fed rotten food, and abused. 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 falls in love with Marlena, crazy August's wife. The circus he joins, in Depression-era America, is second-rate at best. 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. 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. He walked out without completing the test and wound up on a circus train. Jacob, once it becomes known that he has veterinary skills, is put in charge of the "menagerie" and all its ills. There is one glorious passage about Marlena and Rosie, the bull elephant, that truly evokes the magic a circus can create. 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. Not his best idea.

The most interesting aspect of the book is all the circus lore that Gruen has so carefully researched. --Valerie Ryan He is the self-appointed Protector of the Downtrodden, and... The ending is absolutely ludicrous and really quite lovely. Uncle Al, the circus impresario, is a self-serving, venal creep who slaps people around because he can. His life wasn't always like this, however, because Jacob ran away and joined the circus when he was twenty-one. Sara Gruen spares no detail in chronicling the squalid, filthy, brutish circumstances in which he finds himself. August, the animal trainer, is a certified paranoid schizophrenic whose occasional flights into madness and brutality often have Jacob as their object.