Water for Elephants

I just finished Water for Elephants, the latest circus novel out there. Right now it's on the bestseller list, or at least it was recently. It was a fun read, I finished it in about four days or so. I suppose if this had been the first circus book I'd read, I might have found it disturbing. But I enjoyed it. It's weird that I know so much jargon and understand how circus works so it was easy to get into Water for Elephants.

Many of the people on circus in these books are "broken" somehow. Even some of the performers. When I say "broken" I mean that they have a flaw or are stunted in some way, and circus is the only place they can stay. I'm not talking about the freaks, although that's certainly true in that case too. No, what I mean is these are broken people, in some way or another, making them unable to be in regular society as well as they can be in circus. They are drug or booze addicts, manic-depressives or schizophrenics, emotionally wounded through abuse, that sort of thing. The people in Water for Elephants are broken, even the main characters that you are rooting for.

Fred Prowledge made the same point in his book, Mud Show. His theory that those that stay with circus, except for some of the performers, are "broken" in some way. They aren't like other people; they couldn't survive in regular society. People run away to the circus, or away with the circus, as a way to run away from their problems, to get a fresh start, to start over somewhere else. But they bring their problems with them. They are still the same people who couldn't deal with their problems before coming to the circus.

I've met some of these circus people. The "broken" analogy applies. They are running away from something, something that they can't run from to begin with.

It was an interesting book. It is not really a circus book though. It's a book about murder, about the human condition, and a book about romance. I did find it a very interesting read, however, and would recommend it to others.