If I Ran the Circus…

By Breanne Boland July 27, 2006 Issue

As a circus is by definition a gathering of the odd, the outcast, and actual physical freaks, it’s overflowing with interesting characters, people who by nature generate intrigue. When a profession requires its practitioners be constantly on the periphery of society, to the point that all normal people are called “rubes,” uncommon, curious stories naturally emerge. The Benzini Brothers Circus in Water for Elephants is no exception — its train cars are stocked with lonely clowns, alcoholic workmen, giraffes far from home and comfort, crooked ringmasters, and kindhearted strippers. It’s a third-rate circus at best, constantly chasing the reputation of Ringling Brothers with no chance of ever rivaling them. However, while the circus folk are constantly trying to fleece the audience, there’s a real desire to be something better. It creates an exciting dynamic, currents of honestly and dishonesty, the clash of innocence and cunning. It’s a great place to start a book.

Unfortunately, we view this story from the perspective of one Jacob Jankowski, college student, virgin, and young man of principles. In other words he's the most boring man under the big top.

When Jacob is pulled from one of his final veterinary college classes and informed his parents have been killed in a freak accident, he flees his hometown and his final exams with nothing but the shirt on his back. By chance, he stows away in a boxcar in the caravan of the Benzini Brothers Circus. The circus happens to be without a vet, and so he quickly finds himself with more work than he can handle. It should be a secure position — having a vet brings the cut-rate show closer to coveted Ringling Brothers territory, after all — but Jacob promptly and too easily falls in love with Marlena, the show’s horsewoman, and the wife of the most temperamental and violent man with the show. Instead of having some kind of natural conflict arise from such close quarters and such difficult conditions, we have to follow a surprisingly conventional love story, which culminates in one of the more bizarre and uneasily tidy conclusions committed to paper in recent years.

Jacob does mingle with the rest of the circus, although minimally. He bunks with a four-foot-tall clown whose only friend is his dog, and there’s a subplot about a man paralyzed by tainted hooch, based on true events from prohibition. However, most of his time is spent pining after Marlena, and so aside from her act, we barely know what the circus features. It’s probably safe to assume he didn’t know either.

The story of the young Jacob is intertwined with scenes from the life of the geriatric Jacob, who has been committed to a nursing home after breaking his hip. When a circus sets up down the block, the residents go into a tizzy of excitement. Jacob falls into a hostile reverie, keeping his past from the neighbors he feels are so different from him. Gruen’s depiction of the often unwelcome inactivity that can accompany old age is gripping, from the tasteless food to the dread of being surrounded by those who are already where you’re destined to wind up. The book is about one man’s life in the circus, but it’s the scenes with Jacob struggling in the nursing home that are the most emotionally affecting. From his time with the show, you’ll remember details and anecdotes; from his time in old age, you’ll be unable to shake the pervasive feeling of dread Gruen creates.

You wouldn’t think a generally well-written book about a 1930s circus by a woman who adores the era and researches it obsessively could drag, but this one manages it. Maybe if it had focused on the slow decline of the struggling show, or on one of the workmen, or on the stripper, or on anyone else more entwined, interested, and educated in the workings of the show, the torpor wouldn’t have been so overwhelming. However, despite the inclusion of true tales from circus legend, the constantly changing locales, and the horrific events that bookend the narrative, it just doesn’t soar as it should, or as one would expect considering the buildup surrounding this book. The research is its strong point, as are the vintage pictures that accompany the start of each chapter. However, the relationships —the human ones — are decidedly lacking. Jacob loves his elephant and the rest of the circus’s menagerie; Marlena loves her horses; their love for each other is somewhat less illuminated.

For its salacious details and true stories of not so distant history, Water for Elephants earns the paper it’s printed on. Would that the same could be said for the rest of it. Avoid the unworthy fictional components and go find a good book on real circuses of the era instead. Gruen’s source list looks to have some good ones.

Water for Elephants, 335 pages, Algonquin Books, available at bookstores and local libraries.

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