Water for Elephants

While I am on a roll - here is another book that I bought a long time ago but is still one of my favourite books to recommend to friends as its a bit different and I enjoyed it.


Water for Elephants is the story of Jacob Jankowski's life with the circus. At the beginning of the book, Jacob is around 90 years old and living out his days in a nursing home and hating every second of it. As the older Jacob fights to survive the indignities of his old age, he recounts the story of his life with the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on earth, beginning when he ran away and joined the circus when he was twenty-one. 


It wasn't exactly a rebellious, carefree decision though. His parents were killed in an car accident one week before he was to sit for his veterinary medicine exams at Cornell. He buried his parents, learned that they left him nothing because they had mortgaged everything to pay his tuition, returned to school, went to the exams, and didn't write a single word. He walked out without completing the exam and wound up on a circus train.


The circus he joins is however, second-rate at best and in Depression-era America is a terrible place for any animal to be. Jacob is assigned the dubious position as vet to the poor mistreated and malnourished animals. Jacob also makes the fateful mistake of falling in love with Marlena, the wife of August the animal trainer. August is completely mad and very brutal in his handling of both Marlena and Jacob.


I'm not sure what appealed so much to me about this book (as many of the characters have little appeal), but probably as I've said its because it was different and unusual. I've recommended this book to countless people (friends and family) and all who have read it have claimed to love it too. I have however read countless reviews of this book that absolutely savaged the book, the dialogue and the characters - you will have to read it yourself and decide...