Despite the fact that Water for Elephants was a #1 New York Times bestseller--among other bestsellers lists--I found it difficult to get into this book at first.
Admittedly, it may have more to do with a personal aversion I seem to have for circus stories, however, and less with the book itself. (Nightmarish recollections of a long ago reading of Geek Love by Katherine Dunn come to mind...) Of course there is also the "what's going on in my life at the time" hypothesis--that how much I enjoy a book depends on inane and inapplicable factors such as how well I slept, how I am feeling, and how busy I am--and that I myself do not know how large a role these factors actually play in my assessment. (This blog book review effort is based around that, by the way; this is my mission to figure out what it is, exactly, that I like and dislike in a novel in an effort to finally churn out all the fiction pieces in my own head one day.)
But back to the book, anyway. Gruen is lauded both for her "meticulous research" on the traveling circus as well as the twists and turns of her well-thought-out plot, the latter of which held my attention for a marathon one-night reading after I got about 1/4 way through the story. I would say the book falls into the category of "brain candy," as my friend Cathy put it recently. It was easy reading; the plot held the story together; and after my initial slow pace I ended up turning page after page to find out what happens next.
If I think about the things that I liked about Sara Gruen's novel, I can say with ease that it is well-written. The words are clever and descriptive and there is a good flow through which they communicate a story that has depth, intrigue, nostalgia, and some sadness, all rolled into one, as told through the perspective of a once-circus-veterinarian-turned-crotchety-old-man-in-a-nursing home by the name of Jacob Jankowski. As a 23-year-old, after the sudden death of his parents and loss of his father's veterinary practice cause him to walk out of his final vet school exams at Cornell, Jankowski jumps what turns out to be the train of the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth.
We learn of the mystery from the start of the book--a murder by someone dear to Jankowski-- and the rest of the story simply leads up to this dénouement while revealing interesting details about what it was like to be a part of a Depression-era traveling circus. We find out about the segregation of performers and working men; alcohol smuggling during Prohibition and the habit of drinking of Jamaican ginger extract, aka "jake," which left so many people paralyzed in those days; and "red-lighting," the practice of throwing unwanted workers from the train at night. There is an improbable and difficult love story and some endearing elements in regards to the animals that the main character comes to care for, including Rosie the elephant, who, it is later discovered, only speaks Polish and is quite mischevous.
Water for Elephants was loaned to me by my Uncle Ken and it sat on the shelf for some time--again, that whole aversion-to-circus-related-stories thing--until my friend Heather told me that Sara Gruen wrote the story during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), the contest where writers cheer each other on over the interwebs as each attempts to write a 50,000 word novel in one month.
Owing to the short time frame, NaNoWriMo is generally about quantity rather than quality and so the work produced during this contest is liable to be complete crap, as stated on the website. Still, NaNoWriMo is the only time I have managed to write a novel-length work--albeit one that now requires much editing.
The thought of Sara Gruen writing this piece during NaNoWriMo is therefore very appealing to me, much more so than its alternative--my friend Mark's story of a colleague who has written seven novels during NaNoWriMo, several of which she considers to be "good" but none of which ever went anywhwere.
In researching Heather's claim I actually came upon a list of novels written during NaNoWriMo that have been published. I do realize, of course, that it's probably not as simple as it appears. Certainly Gruen conducted all of that "meticulous research" prior to starting off on her 50,000 word November mission--a point on which I failed miserably at last year's NaNoWriMo and the main reason why my book hasn't seen the light of day since. Also, although Water for Elephants was supposedly written during NaNoWriMo, Gruen's interview with Dave Weich at Powell Books indicates that the book actually took a while to complete owing to life interruptions, so it stands to reason that perhaps only a part of the book was written during the contest itself...
Still, the way I figure it, there is hope yet, and the list of published NaNoWriMo pieces only serves to inspire me. A big thanks both to Heather and to Sara Gruen for pointing this out to me.
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