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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
May 2006, 335 pages
Paperback:
May 2007, 368 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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An atmospheric, gritty, and compelling novel of star-crossed lovers, set in the circus world circa 1932 illuminated by a wonderful sense of time and place. Winner of the 2007 BookBrowse Award for Most Popular Book.
Winner of the 2007 BookBrowse Diamond Award for Most Popular Book.
An atmospheric, gritty, and compelling novel of star-crossed lovers, set in the circus world circa 1932, by the bestselling author of Riding Lessons.
When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, drifters, and misfits, a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression, making one-night stands in town after endless town. A veterinary student who almost earned his degree, Jacob is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It is there that he meets Marlena, the beautiful young star of the equestrian act, who is married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. He also meets Rosie, an elephant who seems untrainable until he discovers a way to reach her.
Beautifully written, Water for Elephants is illuminated by a wonderful sense of time and place. It tells a story of a love between two people that overcomes incredible odds in a world in which even love is a luxury that few can afford.
Prologue
Only three people were left under the red and white
awning of the grease joint: Grady, me, and the fry cook. Grady and I sat at a
battered wooden table, each facing a burger on a dented tin plate. The cook was
behind the counter, scraping his griddle with the edge of a spatula. He had
turned off the fryer some time ago, but the odor of grease lingered.
The rest of the midway—so recently writhing with
people—was empty but for a handful of employees and a small group of men waiting
to be led to the cooch tent. They glanced nervously from side to side, with hats pulled low and hands thrust deep in their pockets. They
wouldn't be disappointed: somewhere in the back Barbara and her ample charms
awaited.
The other townsfolk—rubes, as Uncle Al called them—had
already made their way through the menagerie tent and into the big top, which
pulsed with frenetic music. The band was whipping through its repertoire at the
usual earsplitting ...
BookBrowse Awards
2007
A highly enjoyable, well-researched, somewhat romantic read that brings to life the era of the traveling circus and small town America during the Depression...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Jeanne Ray, author of Julie and Romeo
So much more than a tale about a circus, Water for Elephants is a compelling journey not only under the big top, but into the protagonist's heart. Sara Gruen uses her talent as a writer to bring that world alive for the reader: I could smell it, taste it, feel every word of it. This is a fiction reader's dream come true. Robert Olen Butler, author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
The circus, the Great Depression, a complex elephant, equally complex love, the mists and twists of memory articulated in the utterly winning voice of a very old man who's seen it all: these are the irresistible elements of Water for Elephants. Sara Gruen has written an utterly transporting novel richly full of the stuff of life.Jake
Sara Gruen's first novel, Riding Lessons, was published in 2004. She is
an animal lover who lives with her husband, three children, five cats, two
goats, a dog, and a horse in an environmental community north of Chicago. She
says that she was a day away from starting a different book when she saw an
article in the Chicago Tribune about a photographer who documented train
circuses during the 1920s and 1930s - she was immediately hooked. Within
weeks she'd tracked down many out of print books on the subject and spent days
at the Ringling Circus Museum.
Her research took a full year, and many of the more extraordinary scenes in the
book are based on fact or anecdote (as Gruen points out the distinction between
the two...
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