Water for Elephants

The writing in Water for Elephants is fantastic. It is obvious from the beginning that author Sara Gruen did copious amounts of research to bring this novel to life and she did an amazing job. One thing I loved so much about this book was being able to in depthly experience life in the circus alongside main character Jacob Jankowski. His parents died when he was in his early twenties, the day before he was supposed to take his final exams in veterinary medicine at Cornell. Jacob went to the test but was unable to write anything, left, and ended up on a circus train.

While traveling with the circus, Jacob meets new people, sees so many things, and he starts to learn that there is nothing glamorous about life in the circus. Once they find out he studied veterinary medicine, Jacob is put in charge of the animals and all their illnesses. He has a hard time helping the animals because they are already so poorly treated. Gruen leaves out no detail when describing how the animals are abused and fed rotten food if they are even fed at all. Even though Jacob tries to do right by the animals and the other people on the train, he ends up beaten and shoved around a lot by the less than admirable people working with him.

August is the paranoid and schizophrenic animal trainer who is married to Marlena, the lovely woman who does an act with Rosie the sweet elephant. Jacob gets himself in a tough spot when he and Marlena fall in love behind August's back which obviously causes even more trouble with a guy who is already unstable and paranoid.

I loved that as I read this book, I continued to be pleasantly surprised with its greatness the more I read. It kept me enthralled throughout the whole story and inspired me to do some of my own reserach on circuses and the history behind them. It was this book that later led me to read The Night Circus - I felt like I couldn't get enough of the theme. Sara Gruen did an incredible job in every aspect of this novel - I highly recommend it!