Book Review: Water for Elephants


“Life is the most spectacular show on earth."

Water for Elephants is one of those books that I would hear about occasionally, but the occasionally kept on coming.  To me, that signals a good book that isn't just hype.  Also, it was written as a National Novel Writing Month novel.  Since I participate yearly in NaNoWriMo, I figured I needed to support my fellow Nano-ers.  So I gave it a read.

 

Water for Elephants follows the story of almost-Cornell-graduated-veterinarian Jacob Jankowski who ends up as a circus vet during the Depression-era.  The circus doesn't really care that he's not actually a vet.  He just had final exams before he was a real one and, as they put it, it's not like the tatooed man was actually held captive in Borneo and the fat lady only weighs about 375, not 800. There he learns that circus life is not simple, as well as falling in love with Marlena, the horse trainer/rider.  Unfortunately, Marlena's married to the mentally-ill and battering Equestrian and Menagerie director.  And then, there's the Polish elephant.  Seriously.  It's a Polish elephant.  The performing elephant only speaks Polish, which is convenient for someone named Jacob Jankowski.  

It was a good read when all is said and done. The story was moving and engaging.  It was clever and the descriptions were exquisite.  There was a strong plot, with sufficient subplots and other struggles of the characters.  It also did a good job of addressing without soapboxing problems of Depression-era circuses like animal cruelty, racism and circus-slavery.  It wasn't perfect, but it was good.  

Unfortunately, the female love interest could have stood some developing. She was kind of flat, which is especially disappointing when the all other characters had so much depth to them.  Interestingly, Sara Gruen committed the great NaNoWriMo controversy, which is including foreign language in a book without translation.  NaNoWriMo-ers can't agree on whether or not that is okay.  I think that it was merited in this context, and if you needed to know what the Polish meant, you could figure out with context.  If you couldn't figure it out, you weren't really supposed to and that was part of its purpose.  I was disappointed that in the last few chapters there was gratuitous sex that dragged the whole book down a few rating stars.  It was gratuitous to the point that I felt like it was just there to make the book edgy.  Yes, the fact that the sex happened moved the plot.  But the fact that we had to see it?  None existent.  And especially not in that much detail.  Perhaps this is me being innocent or something, but I don't think it was necessary. I wouldn't put this in the porno category.  If it was a movie (which it is, but I haven't seen the movie, so I don't know what they do with it), it would probably be a strong PG-13 level explicit. 

So, in the end, I was ready to give it a 4-leaning-to-5 stars, but then it added pointless, gritty sex and got itself 3 stars in the end.

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