Search - Water for Elephants

Believe the hype you have heard about this book. Gruen's characters leap off the page and into your mind they are so well concieved. Almost every element you could want in a book is here - humor, a bit of a mystery, drama, angst, terror, compassion. It is about relationships; human to human; human and animal. It's about falling in love in an instant. It's about history. It's about life with a traveling circus and all the various personalities that make up a community.

The only word of caution I have is that there are elements of animal cruelty portrayed if that makes you squeemish.

A wonderful story of a young man's life turned upside down. A split-second decision lands him a job with a traveling cirus. The author does an amazingly thorough job, describing the intricacies of circus life in a realistic and gritty manor. The man's circus life story is told in flashbacks, with the majority taking place during the era of Prohibition, and is done with a great deal of love and affection.

With the story set in the circus world, I expected a huge menagerie of characters that would be difficult to keep track of. On the contrary, while there are several well fleshed-out characters, it's not overwhelming. The main character has quite a compelling story to tell, and he's easily likeable.

Highly recommended. A thoroughly enjoyable tale.

I almost didn't read this book because of the wait list (over 900 people!) and because my TBR pile is now a TBR mountain. I'm glad I did read it. Knocked it out in two nights. Memorable read.

Life was hard in the 1930's, there was no work, the stock market crashed. The romance and excitement of the traveling circus was the television of that time. Of course, the circus life itself was hard, gritty, and terrible. And always, underneath it all, one finds compassion.

This is a love story, between a man and a woman, between a man and himself.

Good read!

Jacob Jankowski, the main character, is a 90 or 93 year old man in a nursing home and he tells the story of how he wound up joining a circus in his early 20's. His parents are both killed in a car accident and finds out that his parents have mortaged everything to pay for his tuition at Cornell Vet school. Figuring that he is unable to continue his education and he jumps on a train in the middle of the night running away from everything he had known. The train that he winds up on is a circus train.

He befriends several individuals and winds up working for the outfit. One particular person is a married woman named Marlena. Jacob's boss is Marlena's husband, August. August is a bit off mentally to say the least.

One of the most remarkable and memorable characters in the book is an elephant that the circus aquired named Rosie. When she is first aquired August believes she is dumbest animal on earth because she would not do anything that they tried to get her to do. Because of this August beats Rosie on a regulart basis until Jacob by accident discovers that she only understands commands given to her in Polish. After that discovery Rosie is the star of the show alongside of Marlena.

Things don't stay rosy for long. August has more fits, ex circus employee's who were thrown off the train catch up, and performers get sick and tired of what has been happening. It all comes together in a pretty horrific, yet kind of an amusing scene in the end.

Not only did I enjoy the story of Jacob's circus days, but I also enjoyed Jacob's narration about getting old. It really makes you think about how we treat the elderly and how we should be treating them.

was ok, not the best book I have ever read