Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Title: Water for Elephants
Author: Sara Gruen
# pages: 331
Date published: 2006
Genre: Historical fiction
Challenge(s): Spring Reading Thing 2008, The Book Awards Reading Challenge (2007 Alex Award winner)

Rating:

(highly recommended)

Setting: The Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth traveling circus during Prohibition and Depression-era America

First Few Sentences:

“I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other.”

Synopsis: Water for Elephants is the story of Jacob Jankowski, the almost-veterinarian for the Benzini Brothers traveling circus. The story, told by Jacob through a series of flashbacks from his current life, forgotten and bored-to-tears, in a nursing home, explains how he came to join the circus, vividly depicts the not-so-spectacular life of the roustabouts, performers, and menagerie animals aboard the circus train, and tells of how he fell in love—with woman and beast—with sometimes wonderful and sometimes devastating consequences.

Reason for Reading: St. Pete book club’s June 2008 pick

Random Thoughts:

• I really enjoyed learning that many of the scenes in the book actually happened (or were composites of several different circus stories that Gruen read or heard during her research for the book).
• Some might find the ending a bit of a stretch, but I loved it ;>). It was sweet.
• Water for Elephants was selected as one of the 10 books in 2007 to receive an Alex Award. The Alex Awards are given by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), to recognize adult books that will appeal to teen readers.
• Interview with Sara Gruen

Favorite passages:

“How is it that everyone on this train has so much alcohol?”

“We always head to Canada at the beginning of the season,” she says, taking her seat again. “Their laws are much more civilized. Cheers,” she says, holding out her glass.

I touch mine to hers and take a sip. It’s a cold, clean lager. Magnificent. “Don’t the border guards check?”

“We put the booze in with the camels,” she says.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” I say.

“Camels spit.” (p. 92)

Older Jacob (p.111):

I push the porridge aside and open my vanity mirror. I should know better by now, but somehow I still expect to see myself. Instead, I find an Appalachian apple doll…

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Also reviewed at: Maw Books, Reading Adventures, Trish’s Reading Nook, Thoughts of Joy, The Written Word, Caribousmom, The Thin Red Line, Paradise Alley, Girls Just Reading, Care’s Online Book Club, Teddy Rose, She Treads Softly, B My Life My Thoughts, The Hook Line and Stinker, The Sleepy Reader, A Patchwork of Books, Library & Literary Miscellany, One Minute Book Reviews, A Garden Carried in the Pocket, Overdue Books, Baby Got Books, In the Pages, Book Haven, Devourer of Books, The Inside Cover, Devourer of Books, Book Lovers Get Your English On, The Magic Lasso, Some Reads, The 3 R’s, Book Club Classics, Age 30 - A Year of Books, My Year of Reading Seriously,