Water for Elephants

sunflower27

Just finished reading Water for Elephants by Sara (can't remember surname). Anyone else here read it?
I'd say by far one of the best books I've ever read. Thoroughly enjoyed it and didn't want it to end.

I understand there is a film to be made about it next year

SeekUp

Really? I felt very 'meh' about it. I got about 1/3 of the way through and put it down in order to pick up something else! I think I'll give it another shot in a little while. I'd never heard anything about it before someone gave it to me as a gift, but have heard good things since.

sunflower27

horses for courses, or is that elephants?

I was hooked from the get-go, I have to say, but mid-way through I was unable to put it down.

pog it

What's the writer's style? What's the book about?

sunflower27

Hiya Pog it

Have a read of this

http://bestsellers.about.com/od/fictionreviews/gr/water_elephants.htm

Also found this:



Sara Gruen mines fertile territory in Water for Elephants: the chronic miseries of advancing old age and the terrible years of the Great Depression, when people wandered the country in search of work, their homes and failed business left behind.

As the novel begins, Jacob Jankowski is an old man in an assisted living home, his memories sparked by a nearby visiting circus and a creeping helplessness that assaults his aging body: “Age is a terrible thief. Just when you think you’re getting the hang of it, it knocks your legs out from under you and stoops your back.”

As he falls into fitful dreams, the past emerges. Stripped of everything after his parents’ untimely death, the twenty-three-year-old fails to sit for his veterinary exams at Cornell, grief-stricken and robbed of home and future, the country bartering in goods instead of money.

Hopping a circus train in the dead of night that by belongs to The Flying Squadron of the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, Jacob hires on to care for the show’s menagerie, his advanced training in veterinary medicine a ticket into this bizarre world. Uncle Al, Benzini Brothers circus owner-by-default, is a ruthless businessman who cares only for his reputation, engaged in a quest for fame to rival the great Ringling Brothers.

Star performer Marlena, an equestrienne, adores her animals and is quick to notice Jacob but circumspect in her actions. Her mercurial husband, the trainer August, is obsessively jealous and given to unspeakable cruelties toward man and beast. Jacob does his best to protect the animals from their harsh existence, especially Rosie, an elephant purchased to replace Marlena’s lead horse.

Jacob is increasingly attached to Rosie, empathizing with her plight at August’s hands and helpless to change the situation. Because of his growing affection for Marlena, Jacob suffers August’s increasing affronts, caught in a cycle of inevitable violence, certain of a reckoning.

Related in the somber tones of the Depression, the novel addresses the hardscrabble and often unscrupulous practices of a traveling circus, the rowdy carnie atmosphere and the antiseptic corridors of the assisted living home, all viewed through Jacob’s perspective, as he rages helplessly against the decrepitude of old age and the secrets of the past: “In seventy years, I never told a blessed soul.”

In prose both poignant and infinitely tender, Jacob dwells in both worlds, revealing the wounds of the past and the sorrows of the present. In a devastating denouement, as inescapable as the indifferent world that turns a blind eye to the vagrants of the ‘30s, Jacob’s spirit retains the essence of his kind nature, a man who cannot be broken by circumstances. All is redeemed in a coup de grace that will leave the reader richer for having met this raggedy tribe of miscreants and lost souls.



Have to say, I'm gutted I finished it... but looking forward tot he film, out next year

pog it

Thanks sunflower! I think I'll find it in the bookshop, open it up, and see do I like the writer's style of writing. But it sounds like a wonderful read- if I don't buy it for myself I'm thinking already to get it for my father.

sunflower27

No problem.

It's very easy to read. Can't recommend it enough.

LenaClaire

I loved the book! I thought it was really well written and I was kind of sad when I finished it. I am excited to hear that they might make a movie out of it, I would be interested to see how they handle some of the plot in movie form.

sunflower27

jujibee wrote: »

I loved the book! I thought it was really well written and I was kind of sad when I finished it. I am excited to hear that they might make a movie out of it, I would be interested to see how they handle some of the plot in movie form.

I know, I can't wait! Apparently Reece Witherspoon is to play Marlena. I quite like her. I hope she does the role justice

Posy

I have to read this book now- OP, you make it sound like a great read!

sunflower27

Posy wrote: »

I have to read this book now- OP, you make it sound like a great read!

Ah, I loved it and hope you do as well. Let me know what you think

Miguele1

I know this book, i've it read, it's good.