Behind the Circus Glamour: A reveiw of WATER FOR ELEPHANTS by Sara Gruen

Who doesn’t dream of running away to join the circus? I know the thought has crossed my mind ever since I saw Disney’s Toby Tyler when I was five or six years ol. Sure, Toby had a few hardships, but everything turned out great in the end. He even got to ride the circus horse in the big show. Why couldn’t I do the same?

But real circuses, especially those of small, struggling outfits of the Depression Era, were not the romantically glamorous places of my dreams. In Water for Elephants,  Sara Gruen recreates the real circus, with all of its sordid backstage drama, cruel practices, and realistic performers. She shows the precarious life of the roustabouts and lower ‘class circus workers, and goes beyond the shining surface glitter of circus life.

The book starts with a prologue and a mystery. The narrator (Jacob Jankowski) witnesses a murder. This tense, chaotic, opening scene shows a circus owner’s nightmare. The animals are loose and the crowd is on the verge of panic. Jacob tries in vain to stop the murderer.  Readers are tantalized, left wondering who was murdered and why. The only clue is the murderer was female.

The action then shifts to more modern times. Jacob is now ninety (or ninety-three), stuck in a nursing home. He’s a cantankerous old man who never talks about his past. Until now, when a circus comes to town. The novel follows Jacob back into his past. Alternating between present day and seventy years earlier, we gradually learn Jacob’s story; how he came to be in the circus, and the terrible things that happened there. In many ways this is a love story; not just of a man and a woman, but also masterfully portraying the depth of love that can exist between humans and animals, even in the most dire circumstances.

In addition to a gripping story, with great characters, Sara Gruen’s book is marvelous historical fiction. Along with the glittering costumes, cotton candy and crowds of rubes, we experience the stink of the big cats, the clacking wheels of the circus train on the move, and  the crumpled horse blanket that serves as Jacob’s bed. Woven into the story is a startling picture of a time when prejudice and abuse were common. Freaks were meant to be in the circus. Animals could be abused with impunity. And circus owners could get by with redlighting- the practice of throwing unwanted workers off the train when the circus no longer needed them — even when the victims died.

Most of us will never really run away to join a circus, certainly not the circus so vividly portrayed here. But Gruen brings those long ago days alive for readers, sweeping us into the Big Top of the past. She lets us dream, for a little while at least, that we could really be there, along with Kinko, August, Marlena, Big Al and all the others. And of course,  Jacob Jankowski, who knows what it means to take care of an elephant.