Water for Elephants

A review of Water For Elephants
by Sara Gruen

As a young child, all of us have dreamed of running away to the circus. In the historical novel Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen, Jacob Jankowski, a run away college boy, partakes in the dream we all had in our youth. Written in 2006, Gruen's novel was on the New York Times #1 bestseller list for 12 weeks, as well as winning many other literary awards.
The setting in this novel jumps from The Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, a circus during the Great Depression, and Jacob as an elderly man living in a retirement home, and who causes a whirlwind of trouble. The nomadic circus travels by train up the East coast. The train has a major social order, the further up you are on the train (mainly for performers), the more important you are. As you head to the back of the train there are storage carts, and also where the set-up crew lives. Social Order is also demonstrated at meal times, where performers are seated at checked table cloth with full place setting. The set-up crew is seated at bare wood tables with only salt and pepper. The setting at the nursery home is only two days long, but very vivid in description. Gruen truly makes the hospital look worse than death. With short tempered nurses, bright fluorescent lights, and the flavorless slop they call dinner.
When his parents tragically die of a car crash, Jacob quits veterinarian school at Cornell University just before he graduates and runs away to the circus. Jacob starts as a clean up boy, but thanks to his newly found friend Camel, a set-up worker, becomes the circus' first veterinarian. In doing so Jacob quickly climbs the social ladder, but still maintains a relationship with the workers who got him started. Jacob however makes a new friend in Marlina, a performer who he later falls in love with, and accuantince with August, a bipolar abusive man, who is married to Marlina. The three stick together throughout the majority of the novel, but...