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Product Description:
As a young man, Jacob Jankowski was tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. It was the early part of the great Depression, and for Jacob, now ninety, the circus world he remembers was both his salvation and a living hell. A veterinary student just shy of a degree, he was put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It was there that he met Marlena, the beautiful equestrian star married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. And he met Rosie, an untrainable elephant who was the great gray hope for this third-rate traveling show. The bond that grew among this unlikely trio was one of love and trust, and, ultimately, it was their only hope for survival.
From Amazon.com Review:
Jacob Jankowski says: "I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other." At the beginning of Water for Elephants, he is living out his days in a nursing home, hating every second of it. His life wasn't always like this, however, because Jacob ran away and joined the circus when he was twenty-one. It wasn't a romantic, carefree decision, to be sure. His parents were killed in an auto 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 test and wound up on a circus train. The circus he joins, in Depression-era America, is second-rate at best. With Ringling Brothers as the standard, Benzini Brothers is far down the scale and pale by comparison. Water for Elephants is the story of Jacob's life with this circus. Sara Gruen spares no detail in chronicling the squalid, filthy, brutish circumstances in which he finds himself. The animals are mangy, underfed or fed rotten food, and abused. Jacob, once it becomes known that he has veterinary skills, is put in charge of the "menagerie" and all its ills. Uncle Al, the circus impresario, is a self-serving, venal creep who slaps people around because he can. August, the animal trainer, is a certified paranoid schizophrenic whose occasional flights into madness and brutality often have Jacob as their object. Jacob is the only person in the book who has a handle on a moral compass and as his reward he spends most of the novel beaten, broken, concussed, bleeding, swollen and hungover. He is the self-appointed Protector of the Downtrodden, and... he falls in love with Marlena, crazy August's wife. Not his best idea. The most interesting aspect of the book is all the circus lore that Gruen has so carefully researched. She has all the right vocabulary: grifters, roustabouts, workers, cooch tent, rubes, First of May, what the band plays when there's trouble, Jamaican ginger paralysis, life on a circus train, set-up and take-down, being run out of town by the "revenooers" or the cops, and losing all your hooch. There is one glorious passage about Marlena and Rosie, the bull elephant, that truly evokes the magic a circus can create. It is easy to see Marlena's and Rosie's pink sequins under the Big Top and to imagine their perfect choreography as they perform unbelievable stunts. The crowd loves it--and so will the reader. The ending is absolutely ludicrous and really quite lovely. --Valerie Ryan
My Students Have All Loved This Book - 
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Water for Elephants: A Novel Review
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I am a college English instructor, and I have taught this book for many semesters now. Not only do my students appreciate that I assign them a contemporary books, but semester after semester, they genuinely enjoy the book - even the students who claim to have never finished a book before. It leads to great discussions in class and well-thought out essays. It's such a treat when I can find a novel that really inspires me students to read!
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The Secret Life of the Circus -
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Water for Elephants: A Novel Review
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When Jacob Jankoswki learns of the death of both of his parents in an automobile accident, his grief renders him unable to sit for his final exams at Cornell Vet school and he hops the first train he sees out of town. Fate has intervened, however, and it turns out that the train belongs to a traveling circus, which ends up hiring him on as the show's animal doctor. The year is 1931, jobs are scarce, and, as Jacob quickly discovers, Uncle Al, the show's unforgiving ring master, and August rule the circus with an iron hand. Performers are treated well, but working men often go unpaid or worse, are "red lighted," or thrown off the moving train in the dead of night. It is a brutal world, and Jacob walks its fine line between working men and performers. One day Jacob falls in love with Marlena, the show's star attraction and the wife of homicidally paranoid schizophrenic August, and their worlds at the circus will never be the same.
This is an excellent and engrossing novel, told from the point of view of Jacob both in 1931 and today, with him at age 93 and in a nursing home, reflecting on past memories. Pull back the tent flap and step right in to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. You will yearn to be sitting in the circus train's boxcar, curled up with a book by the light of a flickering kerosene lantern amidst the folds of big top canvas as you roll on through the night to the next town and the next big show.
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you won't be disappointed - 
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Water for Elephants: A Novel Review
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When you're all grown up, with a family to feed and a demanding job, it's not so easy to read books anymore. Bad books are stealing time that is much more precious than when you were living at mom's house, or in a dorm. If you're like me, you can't afford the time-cost of the "try it and see" method of book selection. I can read one novel a month, and it had better be damned good or I'll feel cheated. This is one of those books that is worth the time. I have never written an Amazon review before, but after finishing Water For Elephants, I decided to break my silence. There's a reason you're seeing so many positive reviews here. If you're still undecided, let this review be the one that sets your mind.
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Thunderingly good -
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Water for Elephants: A Novel Review
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A great read from Amazon's used book rack Water for Elephants: A Novelthat had me hooked from Chapter 1. Ms Gruen nails the times and personages that inhabit her novel dead on. ...and the twists and turns are very enjoyable as well. I could personally relate to the circus atmosphere in the depression 30's as those were the carnies that visited my home town in northern New Jersey.
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Completely amazing, can't wait to read it again -
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Water for Elephants: A Novel Review
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This is wonderful book! Ever curious about what happens behind the scenes of a circus? Well this story shows that it's nothing like you've ever imagined. Jacob Jankowski is en route to become a veternarian when all of a sudden he loses his parents and everything changes. He decides to run away and runs into a traveling circus. He eventually gets a job with them as their "vet", and gets an inside look on the running of the circus. But wait, now Jacob is a 90... or is it 93 year old man living in a dull nursing home. The way that this novel flashes back and forth between the present old man and the past young Jacob as his story with the circus and the excentric characters he meets there adds a wonderful effect to this story. It's a must read, once you pick up the book, you won't want to put it down until the end. You'll never believe the crazyness behind the freakshows and the secretive and passionate characters behind the facade of happiness.
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