Novel Thoughts: June 2012

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen takes the mysterious world of the 1930’s American circus and brings it to life. The characters and scenes Gruen writes are as real as words on paper can be. She makes simple words, inked onto simple paper leap from the page and wrap the audience up, sucking them into a historical vortex; taking them from their average lives to something much more.

Starting with a bang Jacob Jankowski’s perfectly mapped out life is twisted in a knot when his parents are killed in a car accident. Desperate to escape the fragrant, powdery church women, bankruptcy and inevitable homelessness, Jacob hops a train. And not just any train, but the train of the Benzini Brothers Greatest Show on Earth…a traveling circus. With arms tucked tightly against their chests, the crew is far from welcoming. A few of the older crew men make an effort to accommodate Jacob, while some don’t, and thus Gruen begins her daunting task of creating a cloud of sympathy over even some of the meanest of characters.

Seemingly entirely cruel and sniveling, August Rosenbluth is written to be a menace. A crew chomping wife beater, in charge of the same animals he brutally beats into submission. As cruel as the afore mentioned man is, Gruen somehow manages to place him a sympathetic bubble. She has the audience despising his guts one minute and cooing at his feet the next. “How could Marlena just walk away from him? He bought her such a pretty necklace. I think he must love her.” They claim. How confused were we as the audience. What to do with our emotions when such an immense character conflict arises. Who do we side with? When the movie came out, the choice of actors made that decision a touch easier.

In the book, Jacob is portrayed as early twenties, a kind and sweet hearted ginger. When the movie made its first appearance on the big screen, Jacob came along a little older, a little more challenging, and a whole lot more attractive. Gruen does an excellent job contrasting Jacob and August, the two main characters. Jacob is given the job of cleaning up the mess his counter makes of the circus’ animals. One hurts them, one heals them. The foil is uncanny. A confusing element, often brought up throughout the book, is who loves Marlena more. While August is her husband, providing for her in the most expensive ways, it seems to lean more in Jacob’s direction. He may be a dirt poor scoundrel but he, well Gruen, certainly has the right frame of mind:

"We lean against the wall in silence, still holding hands. After about an hour she falls asleep, sliding down until her head rests on my shoulder. I remain awake, every fiber of my body aware of her proximity."

While characters are great, you can’t have a book made entirely of characters, especially not entirely of human characters. The setting is one of the more important elements of a great novel. Does it feel real, somewhere you can climb into and out of while you read? Is it a dynamic place, a colorful world, somewhere you actually want to spend time in? For Sara Gruen’s novel, Water for Elephants, all of that is a big fat yes. The setting she creates is unlike a lukewarm soft drink where you’ll drink it because it’s there and it’s not awful and you’re thirsty, but it’s not really a great quencher. Water for elephants is like a cold Gatorade on a hot summer day after you’ve been mowing the lawn under the sun. Her playful animal characters tie all the loose ends. They are magnetic, holding the book together. The connect Jacob and Marlena, August and the show, Jacob and the show, and hold the show itself together. These fuzzy characters provide the book with enough symbolism to fill a high-school English class, and enough unconditional love to fill your Grandma’s living room.

Novel Thoughts

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