Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

As of late, there has been a lot of talk regarding Water for Elephants. I finally got my hands on a copy and thoroughly enjoyed it. I enjoyed not just the story -- a wonderful tale that immerses you into circus life during the Depression -- but I loved that structure and devises Gruen used. One flashes between Jacob in his nineties, and his 23 year old self when he first joined the circus. The climax is the opening scene and you spend the rest of the novel trying to figure out what happened and what let to this event. By the time the climax happens in sequential order, you are equally curious about what happened to Jacob in the after math to his present state.

There are many under currents that enrich the novel. For example, Gruen has a sensitivity for the human animal bond and how another dimension of one's personality is exhibited with one's interaction with animals. Similarly, how people tread the aged and frail. The photos are wonderful, too. A truly engaging novel that compels you to read it again and again.

From the publisher:
Orphaned and penniless at the height of the Depression, Jacob Jankowski escapes everything he knows by jumping on a passing train — and inadvertently runs away with the circus. So begins Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen’s darkly beautiful tale about the characters who inhabit the less-than-greatest show on earth.

Jacob finds a place tending the circus animals, including a seemingly untrainable elephant named Rosie. He also comes to know Marlena, the star of the equestrian act—and wife of August, a charismatic but cruel animal trainer. Caught between his love for Marlena and his need to belong in the crazy family of travelling performers, Jacob is freed only by a murderous secret that will bring the big top down.

Water for Elephants is an enchanting page-turner, the kind of book that creates a world that engulfs you from the first page to the last. A national bestseller in Canada and a New York Times bestseller in the United States, this is a book destined to become a beloved fiction classic.