Water for Elephants
Sara Gruen, 2006
Historical fiction RomanceContemporary fiction
A ninety-year-old in a nursing home looks back on the Depression summer he jumped a circus train and learned what an elephant already knew. A warm, wry voice carries you between a nursing home present and circus memories, with longing and nostalgia close to the surface.
Feels like nostalgia and longing. About memory and love.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy memory-driven historical fiction with a romance at its center and a narrator looking back on a formative summer. The story shifts between a ninety-year-old's nursing home present and his Depression-era memories, so you may need patience with the back-and-forth.
Why read it
It offers a vivid look at Depression-era circus life and a clear-eyed portrait of old age, memory, and wanting to matter.
A page from the book
The moment you stop knowing your own age without counting.
When you are five, you know your age down to the month. Even in your twenties, you know how old you are. I’m twenty-three you say, or maybe twenty-seven. But then in your thirties, something strange starts to happen. It is a mere hiccup at first, an instant of hesitation. How old are you? Oh, I’m—you start confidently, but then you stop. You were going to say thirty-three, but you are not. You’re thirty-five. And then you’re bothered, because you wonder if this is the beginning of the end. It is, of course, but it’s decades before you admit it. Sara Gruen.Gruen wrote the first draft of this novel for National Novel Writing Month, a month-long novel dare, then spent years researching Depression-era railroad circuses.
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Questions readers ask
- Is Water for Elephants for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy memory-driven historical fiction with a romance at its center and a narrator looking back on a formative summer. The story shifts between a ninety-year-old's nursing home present and his Depression-era memories, so you may need patience with the back-and-forth.
- What is Water for Elephants like?
- A warm, wry voice carries you between a nursing home present and circus memories, with longing and nostalgia close to the surface. Feels like nostalgia and longing. About memory and love.
- What should I read after Water for Elephants?
- If you liked Water for Elephants, try Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (Jamie Ford), We'll Always Have Summer (Jenny Han) and The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks).
A taste of the feed
Some kinds of care are a controlled descent, steered as gently as possible.
But choosing to lovingly care for her was like steering a plane into a mountain as gently as possible. The crash is imminent; it’s how you spend your time on the way down that counts.
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet · Jamie Ford
The sensible reason she gave for choosing that college, and the truer one she kept to herself.
We were just together. It all happened so easily and so quickly that it felt like it had always been that way. One minute we were friends, then we were kissing, and then the next thing I knew, I was applying to the same college as him. I told myself and everyone else (including him, including my mother especially) that it was a good school, that it was only a few hours from home and it made sense to apply there, that I was keeping my options open. All of those things were true. But truest of all was that I just wanted to be near him. I wanted him for all seasons, not just summer.
We'll Always Have Summer · Jenny Han
The case for a small life, made by a man who has lived one.
I am nothing special; of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts, and I’ve led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough.
The Notebook · Nicholas Sparks
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