Water for Elephants Reviews

Water for Elephants is a really lovely story. As a historical fiction fan, I loved how the booked tied a made up love story into actual events. The characters are all really well developed. You really fall in love with some the characters and loathe some others. The story paints a seemingly realistic picture on how the old traveling circus days must have been. This book is a quick read... funny, heartwarming, heart wrenching and thoughtful. Great lessons about love, loss, life and getting old. I highly recommend it.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen is my favorite book that I've read this year. The title alone drew me in, but I had no idea what to expect. I'm so glad I chose to read this book thougha nd I highly recommend it.

Water for Elephants is set in the depression when people would do just about anything for a little cash. It is a story about a traveling train circus, how the workers and animals are treated, the friendships that are formed, the friends who are lost and the power of love.

The whole story is told by an old man in a nursing home who can't even remember how old he is. He says he is either...

I must admit that I am a book snob in some respects.  When my sister gave me a book about a child in 19th century China, I was sure that I'd hate it.  (but I wound up loving it!)  When my mother gave me a book about a Depression-era traveling circus, again, I figured that I wouldn't like it.  WRONG. WRONG.  WRONG.  Water for Elephants is one of the best books that I've read in the past year and probably even longer than that.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen follows Jacob Janowski back and forth from the present as a 90-something year old nursing home resident and a twenty-something year...

I would throw caution to animal lovers!  However, in the end-it would be an animal lovers dream!  I could not put this book down!  THis was a fast and easy book to read!  I would recommend having a coupld hours a free time when sitting down to read this book because you aren't going to be able to put it down!

Water for Elephants is an educational story which absorbs the reader into the life of a traveling circus during the Depression Era. I learned more about circus life is this fictional novel than I imagine I would from a nonfiction counterpart. The story is so well written that I kept forgetting that I was reading fiction.

Though the story is based around a circus theme, the underlying content is more about long-forgotten or long-disclosed memories. Memories of youth and innocence lost, memories of love and tragedy, memories of survival and memories of long kept secrets. I will never look at a senior...

Really liked this book.  I never would have bought it if not for the recommendation, it just didn't look like anything I normally read.  The title just doesn't grab you from the first.  This book is compelling, catches your interest from the start, and is very unique.  It will be one of the books that I actually remember out of the hundreds I read.  I highly recommend reading this book to anyone - it will appeal to many different types of people.  I liked the story, and by the end of the book I understood the title.  Very well written, easy to read, great story line, and poignant.  The...

Water for Elephants is well written, descriptive and poignant.  It details the life history and feelings of the main character as he comes of age, his life as a circus worker and the life he was forced to live as he aged.  The perception between past and present was enlightening and entertaining.  It puts first person light on aging, nursing homes and losing control over the way you want to live your life.  The main protagonist had much left to say and more to give to life.  While I enjoyed the book, while reading it I told people it was too dark to say I loved it.  However, I loved the...

what happens when the circus meets bygone days and one man intersects in his twighlight years?

Jacob Jankowski is over ninety years old and spending his days in a nursing home where is is miserable.  We learn over the course of the book that he spent the majority of his life working for a circus.  This was not the circus that dreams are made of.  This is a second rate circus where both the staff and the animals are abused.  Jacob in his youth studied veterinary medicine so he made himself useful to the owners.

The novel is particularly enlightening on circus history and class issues of the...