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Synopsis: What, after all, is illusion but something we want to believe and trust?
Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants is the mesmerizing story about life with a circus in the 1930’s during the Great Depression, told in flashback by Jacob Jankowski, a 90- something year-old man living in a nursing home. Condescended to and surrounded by forgotten octogenarians and hating his life, he is cleaned, fed, and is sitting up as if on display with more or less no say in what happens in his life. He is also living in two worlds: his current life and musings over his early life with a train circus, The
Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. The author creates a marvelous sense of time and place with a cast of colorful characters, to include midgets, freaks, drunks, rubes, roustabouts, as well as skillfully humanized animals. Rosie, a charismatic bull elephant, steals the show. An ensuing love triangle evolves, but there is also danger, lawlessness, and the cruelty shown by people to animals and to each other.
Sitting atop Rosie, attired in pink sequined silks and tiara, Mariena, the beautiful young star of the equestrian act, regally enters the ring, stirring the imagination of the audience, as well as the heart of young Jacob. Amid the thunderous applause and as the band seamlessly plays the Gounod waltz, Uncle Al, the circus ring master in commanding red jacket and glowing epaulettes, directs the show and its performers who follow his nod. August, Mariena’s husband, the equestrian director and superintendent of animals, waits and watches behind the curtains. In vividly describing these scenes, the author artfully and characteristically paints portraits of an irrevocable past.
Only when the bright circus lights are turned off as night falls and the satisfied audience proceeds from the big top, does the reclusive social life of circus folk and, thus, the reality of life on a train circus begin. As the curtain closes and the shades of the train windows are drawn, we learn of the antagonisms of circus life, of a menagerie of flawed characters within a strict caste system, the “outsiders,” and the downtrodden, the squalid circumstances that impact the animals, and the machinations of being run out of town. An excerpt from the novel gives riotous but pointed account: “And you want to know what Uncle Al did when the hippo died? He swapped out her water for formaldehyde and kept on showing her. For two weeks we traveled with a pickled hippo.”
Sara Gruen mixes fiction with fact in her enchanting and at times rambunctious story about life with a circus. Water for Elephants presents a slice of life worth knowing about, capturing a moment in time that is as extraordinary as its many memorable and varied characters. Both circus and animal lore were carefully researched by the author and lend an incredible interest to the novel. If in the end, however, we question its reality--does it matter? The crowd loves it, and as Uncle Al says, “It’s what people want from us. It’s what they expect.” For the reader, suspend your disbelief and enjoy the illusion. Finely developed characters, Jacob’s present and past worlds, a compelling story, and the evocative startling scenes will remain with you and beg for discussion and reflection long after the novel is read.