“Water for Elephants”: A Story With The Perfect Ending

From Water for Elephants:

"Either there's been an accident or there's roadwork, because a gaggle of old ladies is glued to the window at the end of the hall like children or jailbirds. They're spidery and frail, their hair as fine as mist. Most of them are a good decade younger than me, and this astounds me. Even as your body betrays you, your mind denies it."

Sara Gruen, author of the New York Times' #1 best seller Water for Elephants, artfully weaves the story of a Prohibition Era circus as experienced by young veterinarian Jacob Jankowski, into the fabric of Jacob's life as a ninety-plus widower living in a nursing home - a time referenced in the quote above.

It is important to remember that this book is a work of fiction. Though many novels are based on reality, you have to be willing to set aside your own idea of reality in order to be carried away by an author's tale. It is no different with Water for Elephants. Gruen paints a wonderful picture of the sleazy yet glamorous Benzini Brothers' Circus and the lives of its members - lives filled with greed, murder and desperate love.

While most people wouldn't know what working for a Prohibition era circus was like, most of us on this website can relate to watching a loved one decline in a nursing home setting.

For the most part, we are on OurAlzheimers.com for insight and support in caregiving, information on Alzheimer's and other dementias, and we are rewarded by a feeling of community brought about by stories of other people's struggles as caregivers. For that reason, I am going to focus on the elder Jacob Jankowski - widower and nursing home resident.

Gruen made use of some liberties granted to fiction writers in order to make this story work. It's a little too convenient that an outdoor tent circus would be setting up next to a modern day nursing home. That event, however, is pivotal to the book, and Gruen uses it to educate readers about the mind's deterioration as we get older. The device works. Jacob relives, in his mind, his years with the circus, as he anxiously - and at times angrily - waits for the time to come when his son will take him to the present-day circus springing to life outside his window.

His children use a rotating schedule to visit Jacob on weekends. But when no one shows up to take Jacob to the circus, we as readers realize that Jacob has been "warehoused" by his children.

I have a problem with this, since the back story of how Jacob and his wife Marlena met, and the obvious lasting love they had throughout their long marriage was so strongly drawn. If they were so in love, shouldn't they have had wonderful children as a result? Of course Jacob's oldest "boy" is in his seventies, with his own problems. But still, one wonders, why isn't there more closeness? More caring within the family?

I know this happens in real life, but it is more apt to occur when the family is dysfunctional. I liked to think that Jacob's family wasn't so. However, here again, the novelist's job is to manipulate each detail for the good of the whole. Jacob had to be somewhat abandoned by his family for the plot to have worked. So, Gruen is forgiven.