Water for Elephants
Sara Gruen
Algonquin Books
Fiction, Historical Fiction
Themes: Circuses
*****
Description
Stranded in a nursing home by his too-busy family after breaking a hip, nonagenarian Jacob reminisces about his youth during the Great Depression. After his parents died in a car crash and the bank took everything from the land to the linens, he ran out on his veterinary final exams at Cornell, winding up – quite by accident – on the Benzini Brothers circus train. Initially threatened with "redlighting," or being hurled out of the moving train (possibly while crossing a trestle), Jacob's veterinary education instead lands him a relatively respectable position in charge of the circus menagerie... a position perilously close to the temperamental trainer Augustus and his sweet, gorgeous wife, the liberty horse rider Marlena.
Review
The main reason for the top rating is the endings - young Jacob's and old Jacob's, both. I don't read that much "mundane" fiction, so part of my mind kept looking for the twist, but I was satisfied with the story nonetheless. Gruen creates some memorable characters and events, convincingly recreating a bygone place and time, based on heavy research into the now-vanished world of train circuses. Accounts of animal and human abuse are also based on history, sadly, but, as the book itself shows, it was a whole different world back then, and the circus itself was a world apart from even that. And, yes, there is an elephant, the independent-minded Rosie. If the story itself had a few lulls, I found the endings so perfect that I have to give it top marks.