Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Water for Elephants is the story of Jacob's life with this circus. Sara Gruen spares no detail in chronicling the squalid, filthy, brutish circumstances in which he finds himself. The animals are mangy, underfed or fed rotten food, and abused. Jacob, once it becomes known that he has veterinary skills, is put in charge of the "menagerie" and all its ills. Uncle Al, the circus impresario, is a self-serving, venal creep who slaps people around because he can. August, the animal trainer, is a certified paranoid schizophrenic whose occasional flights into madness and brutality often have Jacob as their object. Jacob is the only person in the book who has a handle on a moral compass and as his reward he spends most of the novel beaten, broken, concussed, bleeding, swollen and hungover. He is the self-appointed Protector of the Downtrodden, and... he falls in love with Marlena, crazy August's wife. Not his best idea.

The most interesting aspect of the book is all the circus lore that Gruen has so carefully researched. She has all the right vocabulary: grifters, roustabouts, workers, cooch tent, rubes, First of May, what the band plays when there's trouble, Jamaican ginger paralysis, life on a circus train, set-up and take-down, being run out of town by the "revenooers" or the cops, and losing all your hooch. There is one glorious passage about Marlena and Rosie, the bull elephant, that truly evokes the magic a circus can create. It is easy to see Marlena's and Rosie's pink sequins under the Big Top and to imagine their perfect choreography as they perform unbelievable stunts. The crowd loves it--and so will the reader. The ending is absolutely ludicrous and really quite lovely. --Valerie Ryan

Average Customer Rating:

Captivating From Beginning To End!	Customer Rating:
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. An amazing story, told in an intriguing style - I could not put it down!

Great read, but

Customer Rating:

I saw this book in the bookstore and it sounded very interesting so I got it out of the library. I wasn't disappointed. It was very easy to read and flowed nicely. Very interesting and quirky characters which I liked. Rosie the elephant was a great character. I agree with one of the other reviewers who compared the book to Sophies Choice. I thought the same thing when we meet the ringmaster. I really enjoyed the book but I was disappointed that there were a couple of parts that were unnecessarily crude (as opposed to necessarily crude?). It's like the female writer of the book had to prove that she could be as crude as any man. Other than that, it was one of my favourite books this year.

One of the Best Books I Read This Year	Customer Rating:
An amazing journey filled with brutality, compassion, and love against the crazy backdrop of the circus life. Beautifully written. You will not be able to resist falling in love with Rosie.

Water for Elephants	Customer Rating:
I am truly enjoying the story and the characters. There are certain parts of the book I felt the author could have left out and really added no benefit to the story. The sexual content of them was too much for me. But all in all worth the read.

Awesome!	Customer Rating:
I thoroughly enjoyed every page of this book. Gruen's research of circus' and the Great Depression were amazing. I highly recommend this book to any animal lover out there.