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Email a friendThe hidden side of the circus
ENCHANTING, moving and compelling, Sara Gruen's third novel Water for Elephants is easily the most cinematic and atmospheric novel to be released since Angela Carter's Wise Children.
Told as a series of memories reminisced by 93-year-old Jacob Jancowski, the novel chronicles his early life during the depression as a vet for the Benzini Brother's Most Spectacular Show on Earth.
Here, Jancowski realises that, behind the colourful smokescreen of the circus world, there lies a disturbing reality of brutal physical abuse, where he has to face moral challenges and obsessive love.
Although ultimately a romance, Gruen manages to weave so many issues, including animal cruelty, class division and biblical parallels, into the plot.
Wonderfully written with vivid detail, readers will be thrown into a bizarre world of glitter and glamour, poverty and destitution, love and loss.
INDIE PURCELL