Water for Elephants - - Sara Gruen
Okay....I have FINALLY gotten all caught up with everything, and gotten back to reading. Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen was my latest selection. This book follows the life of Jacob Jankowski, a first generation American from a Polish immigrant family. It simultaneously reviews the first ninety, or ninety-three (the character himself it not sure how old he is) years of his life, as well as his current life, in a large 'assisted living' complex.
When Jacob was young, he went to Cornell Vet School. The week before his finals, ready to go home to join the family practice, he receives news that both of his parents were killed in a car accident. When he goes to settle their estate, he finds that his parents had kept the fact that they remortgaged their house to afford his Ivy-League education from him, and that they had no money. His father could not bear to see animals getting neglected when people could not afford vet bills in the Great Depression, and had been accepting primitive payments of nuts and garden vegetables when money ran short. So, Jacob was left with no parents, or relatives, with a week left in his education, and absolutely no money. As to not give everything away, i am going to skip a bit here, but he runs away with the small circus, that calls itself the 'most spectacular show on earth.' The owner is a stingy man obsessed with the competition: Ringling Brothers.
All sorts of problems follow Jacob, from having to room with a cranky dwarf to falling in love with his mental boss's wife, to being in charge of an elephant that is 'dumb.' The story cuts back and forth to the nursing home, where the widower is sitting by a window, watching a circus set up in the lot next door. He is promised that when 'his people' come to visit on Sunday, he will get to go. Before, he has a fight with another guest who boasts of having carried all of the water for the elephants when HE worked in a circus. Jacob knows that that is a lie, and gives the newbie a piece of his mind.
This book really gets into a lot of things. It details love, loss, growing old, being young, and not knowing just where you stand, or if you are even on your feet. I really enjoyed it.
When Jacob was young, he went to Cornell Vet School. The week before his finals, ready to go home to join the family practice, he receives news that both of his parents were killed in a car accident. When he goes to settle their estate, he finds that his parents had kept the fact that they remortgaged their house to afford his Ivy-League education from him, and that they had no money. His father could not bear to see animals getting neglected when people could not afford vet bills in the Great Depression, and had been accepting primitive payments of nuts and garden vegetables when money ran short. So, Jacob was left with no parents, or relatives, with a week left in his education, and absolutely no money. As to not give everything away, i am going to skip a bit here, but he runs away with the small circus, that calls itself the 'most spectacular show on earth.' The owner is a stingy man obsessed with the competition: Ringling Brothers.
All sorts of problems follow Jacob, from having to room with a cranky dwarf to falling in love with his mental boss's wife, to being in charge of an elephant that is 'dumb.' The story cuts back and forth to the nursing home, where the widower is sitting by a window, watching a circus set up in the lot next door. He is promised that when 'his people' come to visit on Sunday, he will get to go. Before, he has a fight with another guest who boasts of having carried all of the water for the elephants when HE worked in a circus. Jacob knows that that is a lie, and gives the newbie a piece of his mind.
This book really gets into a lot of things. It details love, loss, growing old, being young, and not knowing just where you stand, or if you are even on your feet. I really enjoyed it.
posted by offshelf @ 3:53 PM
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