Summer Book Review #2

This review was SUPPOSED to be about The Road by Cormack McCarthy.  

But then I began to read it, and I realized that my mushy, pregnant brain and McCarthy's beautiful but sparse (and, Holy Hannah Montana, I mean sparse) prose combined to give me a splitting headache 4 pages into the first chapter.

I know - Blasphemy! It won a frakking Pullitzer!  But apparently the selection committee wasn't made up of hormonal pregnant women.  I'll get back to it in a few weeks, I swear.

In the mean time, I moved right along to another book from The List.  This time it was Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen.

I was a big fan of the short-lived HBO show Carnivale.  I didn't finish it out, however, because it started to get too weird.  And, really, what I loved about it was the depression-era circus culture.  Okay, so it wasn't technically a circus - it was a carnival.  But you get the idea.  This book tapped right into that fascination, complete with photos from the era.  Apparently, the author herself was inspired to write the book after coming across a collection of these photos.  

The Era of the Depression is as foreign a world to us of this digital generation as the French Revolution was to Americans of that era.  Add to that the romantic and strange world of Circus life and the effect is as disorienting and fantastical as the world from any science-fiction piece I have ever read.

The story of Jacob and his sudden immersion into the realities of the depression amidst personal tragedy ends up really being a framework to explore the unique relationships of the Circus folk.  The character is allowed to move between the various classes of Circus society with relative ease throughout the story.  

The strange freedom of his adventures is in stark contrast to the state of modern-day Jacob, who spins the tale of his memories from the confines of his restrictive nursing home.  

I was utterly captivated by the characters in the tale; Kinko the dwarf-clown, Marlena the glamorous horse trainer, and the larger-than-life Uncle Al - the man in charge of the Benzini Brothers Circus.  Each return to Jacob in present day felt like being ripped from the bustling sights and smells of the circus midway and crammed into the cages with the animals Jacob tended as Circus Vet.  

The book is heavier than I anticipated; this isn't a fluffy bit of cotton-candy summer reading, for sure.  That said, I found myself staying up past bedtime to finish "just one more chapter" and I nearly over-processed the dye on my hair when I lost track of myself in the middle of a chapter that included a funeral procession for a deceased "Fat Lady" who was displayed in an elephant cage.  (Thankfully, I came to my senses in time to wash out the color before could turn myself into "The Bald Lady with Burned Scalp" and join a sideshow, myself.) 

So there we are.  Oh, and there IS an elephant, as well.  A lovely girl named Rosie.  

Now, on to "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson.  Which I suppose means I'm reading 2 history-related works in a row.  Look, Ma! I'm reading for fun AND getting edumacated!