Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

When I heard all the buzz on facebook about this book, I just had to pick it up and read it for myself .  And I had watched a preview for the movie based on this book and wanted to see it, but I always like to read the book first.  So when I went to the library to ask if they had 'Water for Elephants,' the librarian looked at me blankly for a split second, then said, "I'm guessing that's the title of a book."  Yes, I wasn't actually asking if you had water for elephants!

The basic premise of the book is a young man, Jacob Jankowski, living in the 1930's who runs away from his life when his parents are killed in a car accident and their farm is repossessed.  He was literally just about to write his final exams at an ivy league school to become a veterinarian when he gets the news of their deaths.  In desperation to escape his new reality, he jumps a train which he quickly finds out is part of the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth and he ends up becoming their vet, working in the menagerie with lions and other large cats, monkeys, zebras, giraffes, horses and an elephant.  What follows is kind of a coming-of-age story, where young, innocent Jacob is thrust into a lifestyle that includes seediness, brash and immoral living, and cruelty to animals and humans, and he is forced to make very difficult life and death decisions for love and friendship.  The author, Sara Gruen, obviously did her research, and included many aspects of circus life at the start of the Great Depression.  I found a lot of it really interesting and scary and quite sad, like the ring master withholding pay from the roustabouts (labourers) for months on end, men being redlighted (thrown from a moving train, often while passing over a bridge, to get rid of unwanted mouths to feed), lewd sideshow acts just for 'red blooded American men,' and of course a head honcho that cared only for profit, not for his animals, and even less for his people.  The whole book being about circus people really isn't as cheesy as you might think.

However, the first chapter I read of this book made me a little cautious in continuing.  I do not like reading fiction books written in the present tense.  It really bothers me.  In addition there is some crude language and taking God's name in vain, which I hate reading.  In my mind, I try to skip over it, but you still see it in black and white in front of you.  The same goes for overly graphic sexual scenes, of which there are at least three in this book.  In my mind, those things are completely unnecessary and the author could still make her point without being so explicit.

This novel was definitely intriguing and contained enough to keep me reading.  But I can't quite pinpoint what made it so interesting.  There's not a lot of suspense but I did find myself really rooting for Jacob and wanting to know how his life turned out (as the actual novel is flashbacks of a 93 year old man reliving his early circus days, so we know he lives a long time).  I was especially captivated in the last 100 pages or so.

So with my mixed feelings about it, I can't decide whether I'd recommend it or not.  It definitely kept me hooked, as I finished all 331 pages in 4 days (fairly good considering my busy week with the kids), and was quite an entertaining read.  And yet the faults were such that they quite turned me off.  So based on my very short review here, I'll leave it up to you.