Staff Picks Blog
Ninety-year-old Jacob Jankowsky remembers the years he spent in the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth traveling circus. Jankowsky was set to graduate from Cornell veterinary school and begin a career in his hometown. Instead, his parents are killed in a car accident, leaving him with no home and no money. He joins the circus and soon uses his skill to care for the animals and people around him, including an elephant who only responds to Polish commands. In this love and coming of age story, Gruen captures the highlights and lowlights of circus life along with the characters and culture the circus gathers.
I recently visited the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida. The visit made me want to read Water for Elephants again, as it helped me understand the Menagerie and other cultural aspects of the circus. I’ve also heard that the circus museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin is a great place to visit. Sounds like a good road trip for the summer! This book is available at ICPL in Fiction, Fiction on Disc, and Large Print.
I was a little late getting to Water for Elephants, a word of mouth best-seller from last summer. It has a lot going for it–the rich and colorful history of circus life, extensively researched, Depression era setting, a crooked ringmaster, a sadistic animal trainer, a tough dwarf with a heart of gold. It moves right along, a good story well-told. A couple quibbles. There’s a present-day framing story, which adds depth, but it’s largely about the indignities of living in a nursing home. The story screeches to a stop every few chapters to remind of of this. I’d have cut the framing story by about 30-50 per cent. Also, a few plot points just strike me as unlikely. A very young newcomer is adopted by the animal trainer as a colleague and social companion, which given the rigid hierarchies of circus folk elsewhere described, probably wouldn’t happen. There’s also a stampede of the menagerie, and the various animals all run beside each other. It’s a striking image, but I think the zebras, for instance, would run away from the big cats.
Anyone who liked this well enough to want more might consider a couple other recent novels. Blue Moon Circus and especially TheFinal Confession of Mabel Stark also capture many of the elements that make Water for Elephants so appealing. Anyone with a taste for the dark side, of course, should proceed directly to Geek Love.