Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

I have been recommended this book by several people for the past couple of years. I had been putting off due to the now ridiculous list of things I would like to read until it was physically given to me this summer. I decided, hey, it's in my hands, let's give it a shot. Overall, I didn't hate this book, but I do not think it was as good as I was told it was.

This story revolves around Jacob Jankowski, a ivy league trained veterinarian who meets up with a circus after running away from his parents' death. It starts out as him as an old man and alternates between his present life in a nursing home and his past life in the circus. This is one of the biggest pluses to me in the book, but that is only due to my affinity for multiple perspectives in a novel.

I found it very difficult to want to finish this book. In fact, it took me months, plural. This is highly unusual. I was not driven to find out what happened or to create an emotional bond with any character (Well, I kind of liked the dog, Queenie). Why? I don't know. Maybe I am too close to my Gramma and do not like the thought her being miserable in the nursing home as Jake was, or maybe it was because I couldn't feel the bond he was feeling between Marlena and himself, or maybe because I worked at a circus and a fair (true story) and this seems completely normal to me, I don't know. Don't get me wrong, it was not an awful book, I was just never anxious to continue reading it.

Overall, not a bad choice. It has a decent plot, but there is no depth to it that I could get into. It is all surface value to me. We never get to delve into the affects of his parents dying while he was young, or how the vast change in life style affected his overall life, or pretty much anything that has to do with why he is the way he is or was. The most we get is that keeping a secret, a vastly obvious and reasonably unimportant secret, has been REALLY hard for him. It was kind of like listening to someone's vacation story. Interesting, some cool things happen, but you don't walk away feeling like you have been given a new perspective on things or learned new information about something that you can ponder over. It just kind of was. If Seinfeld were to write about a circus, I imagine it would resemble this book.

And, having worked with an elephant in real life via the circus at Enchanted Forest with an awesome guy named Circus Josh (in my phone anyway), I can attest that no human being can carry enough water for an elephant.