Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
SMOOTH. It was a smooth, fairly quick read. I liked Sara way of using the metaphors that exactly give us the idea of the emotions the character is going through. I also liked the way she kept on switching the narration, at right times, between the life of 93-yr old Jacob in a geriatric home and his life in Benzini Brothers circus when he was young.
This book is a wonderful historical fiction that describes how circuses used to be always in motion from one town to another on trains in 1930′s. She talks about the social barrier between the working class people and the performers, the process of setting up and dismantling a circus when moving on to the next town, jake paralysis, detail description of few circus acts. An interesting touch to the story is that Sara has weaved in real life circus incidents into this fiction.
The character development of Jacob, Walter and Camel were very good, but I kept expecting more on the development of Marlena’s character. Her character turns out to be a bit boring, flat and lacking in detail. Without adding spoilers, I would like to add that after reading you might also realize that the climax was not totally justified for the villain.
In one part of the book where Jacob keeps on saying the same “,but he hit her” to different characters, it seemed very ridiculous and funny to me even though that was not meant to be funny. Things like this, lack of character building and predictability of the plot makes me give it a 3/5.
But I would give the historical fiction portion of this book a 4/5.
Note to parents: Not appropriate for kids.
