Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

I just finished listening to the audiobook version of Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen and I just gotta say WOW. I totally understand why this is a top ten best seller. I give it a 10. I will reread it; I may even fork over cash money for a copy to add to my personal library (high praise from me, indeed).

This is a story about a lot of things, love at first sight, the indignity of becoming elderly, finding friends in the oddest places, the struggles of a nation slogging its way out of the Great Depression, man’s inhumanity to man (and animals), and the satisfyingly karmic concept of what comes around goes around. But mostly it’s about a guy who ran off and joined the circus and found a life.

If you’ve read my earlier post on what I like to read, you’ll recognize what I have to say here. Since I was listening to a recording, I drove my husband a bit nuts with my verbal responses to the story. I laughed out loud. I “yessssed” and “aaawwwed” and gasped. Fortunately, he was not around for the part where I had to stop what I was doing because I was sobbing too hard to continue. The story was told vividly, the characters felt real to me. And while no one in the story gets to live happily ever after, some of them get to live contentedly to a ripe old age.