Water for Elephants: A Novel
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- ISBN13: 9781565125605
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
As a young man, Jacob Jankowski was tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Planet. It was the early part of the fantastic Depression, and for Jacob, now ninety, the circus world he remembers was both his salvation and a living hell. A veterinary student just shy of a degree, he was place in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It was there that he met Marlena, the gorgeous equestrian star married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal teacher. And he met Rosie, an untrainable elephant who was the fantastic gray hope for this third-rate traveling show. The bond that grew among this unlikely trio was one of like and trust, and, ultimately, it was their only hope for survival.Amazon.com Review
Jacob Jankowski says: “I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the additional.” At the beginning of Water for Elephants, he is living out his days in a nursing home, hating every second of it. His life wasn’t permanently like this, but, because Jacob ran away and joined the circus when he was twenty-one. It wasn’t a romantic, carefree choice, to be sure. His parents were killed in an auto manufacturing accident one week before he was to sit for his veterinary medicine exams at Cornell. 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 walked out lacking completing the test and wound up on a circus train. The circus he joins, in Depression-era America, is second-rate at best. With Ringling Brothers as the standard, Benzini Brothers is far down the scale and pale by comparison.
Water for Elephants is the tale of Jacob’s life with this circus. Sara Gruen spares no detail in chronicling the squalid, filthy, brutish circumstances in which he finds himself. The animals are mangy, underfed or fed rotten food, and abused. Jacob, once it becomes known that he has veterinary skills, is place in charge of the “menagerie” and all its ills. Uncle Al, the circus impresario, is a self-serving, venal creep who slaps people around because he can. August, the animal teacher, is a certified paranoid schizophrenic whose occasional flights into madness and cruelty regularly have Jacob as their object. 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, inflated and hungover. He is the self-appointed Protector of the Exploited, and… he falls in like with Marlena, crazy August’s wife. Not his best thought.
The most appealing aspect of the book is all the circus lore that Gruen has so carefully researched. She has all the right vocabulary: grifters, roustabouts, workers, cooch tent, rubes, First of May, what the band plays when there’s distress, 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. There is one glorious passage about Marlena and Rosie, the bull elephant, that truly evokes the magic a circus can make. It is simple to see Marlena’s and Rosie’s pink sequins under the Huge Top and to imagine their perfect step design as they perform unbelievable stunts. The crowd likes it–and so will the reader. The ending is absolutely ludicrous and really reasonably lovely. –Valerie Ryan
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I was disappointed by this book. The dialogue was very campy. What a waste of $24.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Came in excellent condition but had to contact the seller by E-mail since I had not gotten it in nearly a month–got it promptly after that.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
The problem with this book is that everyone already knows that Elephants (as well as every additional mammal) need to drink water, and that the appealing thing with them is their ability to drink through their nose (trunk). I am just having a hard time seeing how this is going to fill up an entire tale! All to say, don’t knock it till you try it! I should seriously give this a read, and it appears to be on sale right now.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
I really haven’t read this book as of yet but I am VERY pleased with the condition and the quick shipping process. It came to me very quickly.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
I was really unimpressed by this book. In fact, I have already agreed it away to some additional unsuspecting person. Do yourself a favor and wait for the paperback to come out if you want to save a small money.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5