25 of 52 in my 2011 book blogging challenge.
I think I’m one of the last people in America to read Water for Elephants. It’s been at or near the top of the New York Times Best Seller List for months (not its first appearance there either), and one person after another in my immediate sphere of friends, both real and virtual (or real and imagined), has mentioned reading it and enjoying it. Finally, after months of thinking I was about to read it and then getting distracted and reading something else instead, I picked it up and stuck with it to the end.
I enjoyed it. I really did. I don’t think it is the best book ever. I don’t think it’s the best book I’ve read this year. I won’t say it doesn’t deserve the hype, though. It’s a good book. It’s a page-turner about The Great Depression. We should give Gruen her due. This was not an easy feat to pull off.
Water for Elephants cuts back and forth between the 1930s and the early 2000s. Jacob, the narrator, is an old man living in a nursing home. He tells us the story of his time spent with a circus when he was fresh out of college. His story is a love story set amongst all manner of intrigue, drama, and tragedy. His story is one of love for a woman and one of love for animals, one enormous elephant named Rosie in particular.
We see in the circus all of the worst elements of human nature. We see the degree to which people are willing to put up with any measure of abuse just to have food and shelter for a little while. We see the degree to which the greedy are able to get away with exploitation of the hungry in this situation.
We also catch a glimpse of the illusions created in the circus to keep people smiling and keep people with very little spare change paying for those smiles.
All of that is well and good. It’s intriguing. It’s full of suspense. My favorite parts of the book, however, are not the ones set in the circus but the ones set in the nursing home. Gruen gives us a tender and illuminating view of what happens to a man who has lived an adventurous life when his great-grandchildren are grown, his wife of more than 60 years is gone, and he exists at the mercy of nurses who barely know his name.
Jacob rebels against the confines of the nursing home and for good reason. He is forced to take medicines he does not believe he needs. He is given unappetizing food. He is wheeled over to sit next to a man he does not like. And because his grandchildren take turns coming to see him, he feels like he can’t sustain a meaningful relationship with any one of them. He has enough grandchildren, you see, that when they take turns visiting, it might be months before he sees the same one again.
This part, I’m afraid, is all too realistic. I found the nursing home much bleaker than the Depression, yet even it is not without its moments. One nurse in particular befriends Jacob and sneaks treats to him. He also finds humor in his surroundings. At one point he decides that they should separate the crazy old people from the normal old people, but when he isn’t sure which side they’d put him on, he changes his mind.
I spent half the book angry at Jacob’s family for leaving him in the home like that. He had five children. I thought they ought to do better. But then Jacob himself reminds us that his children are in their 60s and 70s and have health problems of their own.
It’s no wonder he spends his days thinking of the circus of his youth. For all its tragedies, it was where the life with his wife and family that he misses so much began.
This a lovely, tragic story, and if you are interested, you should definitely read the book and not just see the movie. The movie version is good, but it leaves out some of the best parts of the book. The movie is about the romance between Jacob and Marlena. The book is about love in so many other forms than that.
