Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

★★★☆☆
As a young man, Jacob Jankowski was tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. It was the early part of the great Depression, and for Jacob, now ninety, the circus world he remembers was both his salvation and a living hell. A veterinary student just shy of a degree, he was put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It was there that he met Marlena, the beautiful equestrian star married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. And he met Rosie, an untrainable elephant who was the great gray hope for this third-rate traveling show. The bond that grew among this unlikely trio was one of love and trust, and, ultimately, it was their only hope for survival.

I was really excited to read Water for Elephants, it has almost 10,000 ratings on BN.com and still has a 4.5 star rating.  They made a movie about the book after all - it has to be good, right?!  However, I was really disappointed in this book. 

There are some very depressing overtones - much of the beginning of the story is told by Jacob, the main character, while he is in a nursing home in a decrepit, depressive state.  It was a relief when the book jumped back to the 20-something Jacob telling the story.  But the whole first half to two-thirds of the book is filled with traumatic and depressing occurrences.  In addition, there's not much of a story up to that point, just a lot of describing what life on the circus was like and some character descriptions.  The book title includes the word 'Elephant,' the synopsis of the book talks about Rosie the elephant, and yet she doesn't even make an appearance in the book until it's halfway over.  I started reading some of the 'bad' reviews on BN.com, and the people who gave it 1 and 2 stars said things like, "Am I missing something?" and "What's all the hype about?"  Those were my feelings exactly for the vast majority of this book.

As disappointed as I was in the beginning, once I got through the first two-thirds of it, the storyline really started to pick up (there was actually a story!), and the love story emerged.  As I've said before, I am a sucker for a good one.  So even though this love story took a while to reveal itself, there were a good 45 pages or so of this book that I really enjoyed.

I will say it is interesting to read about the circus from a historical perspective.  I think the author did a lot of background research to make it historically accurate, and she even incorporated some real events into the book.  I just wish the plot filtered through the whole book instead of just a portion, and I wish much of it weren't so depressing.  Also, I feel like it just kind of ended empty.

There are several scenes of violence in this book, both toward people and toward animals.  There are some sexually explicit scenes as well.  I get that the author was trying to depict some of the things that happened, I just thought the level of detail was probably unnecessary.

Overall, I am glad I read this book.  Although I didn't love all of it, there was a portion that I did enjoy.