Book Review: "The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks" by E. Lockhart

After reading and loving We Were Liars, the most recent bestseller from E. Lockhart, all I wanted to do was read more of her stuff. So, naturally, I looked up her other titles right away. And to my great surprise—though it shouldn’t have been!—I actually already had one of her first books—one of her biggest, most well-known books, no less—on my shelf, just sitting there unread. It had been used as an example in a children’s lit writing class I took at Gotham Writer’s Workshops years ago, and I had purchased it instantly after that session. I just hadn’t read it. *hangs head in shame*

So I remedied that ASAP.

Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14: 

Debate Club.
Her father’s “bunny rabbit.”
A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.

Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15: 

A knockout figure.
A sharp tongue.
A chip on her shoulder.
And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston. 

Frankie Laundau-Banks.

No longer the kind of girl to take “no” for an answer.
Especially when “no” means she’s excluded from her boyfriend’s all-male secret society.
Not when her ex boyfriend shows up in the strangest of places.
Not when she knows she’s smarter than any of them.
When she knows Matthew’s lying to her.
And when there are so many, many pranks to be done. 

Frankie Landau-Banks, at age 16: 

Possibly a criminal mastermind. 

This is the story of how she got that way.

I didn't really know what to expect from this story, but I quickly found myself sucked into Frankie's world of elite boarding schools, secret societies, humorous antics, and life-changing lies. I mean, it's always fun when secret societies are involved, let's all just admit it, and Lockhart weaves in some really interesting true facts about real-life societies, just upping the intrigue. In some regards, the story is a little unrealistic and over-the-top plotwise, but this exaggeration is necessary to serve the purposes of the story, making me give Lockhart a pass. ;)

Lockhart's voice is accessible and smooth in this story, as well, and her use of the omniscient POV was one of the best I've seen in ages. It's not any easy POV to use successfully, but she managed to execute it in such a way that I really felt like I was overseeing the whole scene through a pair of binoculars, which is kind of exactly how you would spy on a secret society. I found it to be very fitting and very effective. 

In fact, I'm not sure I would've enjoyed the story as much if it had actually been from Frankie's POV. While the reader, of course, gets a lot of insight into Frankie and her thoughts/feelings, I didn't want to be in her head any more than I already was. Part of this was because I found Frankie to be a difficult character to truly like. At least not once she moved into the "In" crowd. However, someone Lockhart made me still care about Frankie, and I think the use of POV is largely why. I was able to find her relatable from an outside perspective, particularly in her need to belong and to do something meaningful even if she didn’t get the credit. 

More than any of those things, though, I found this story to be a surprisingly honest and realistic take on relationships, both friendships and romances alike, in terms what it means to know and love somebody, needing more than just “getting along,” and wanting someone to truly connect with. It really spoke to me on that level, even amidst all the high school drama, prank pulling, and sneaking around. The concept of social change also runs rampant in the novel, working itself into the story in a way that not only leaves you simultaneously impressed and appalled, but also leaves you pondering the ethics of it all.

The Last Word: A fun and quick read that will leave you thinking long after the last page. 

Guest Blogger, Dan Cabrera: Book Review, "Underworld" by Don DeLillo

When considering America in the twentieth century, trash probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. By “trash” I mean garbage, refuse, or waste. The thrown away, tossed aside detritus of everyday life that, when assembled together, paints a complete portrait of who we are. This is what Don DeLillo does with his 1997 novel Underworld*. He takes the discarded, the peripheral, and brings it into full view. He looks at America in the second half of the twentieth century--and our own inner lives--by sifting through the remains. For DeLillo, one nation’s trash is his treasure.

Underworld is a grand tome that is deservedly called a “Great American Novel,” a “Masterpiece,” or just “Very Long.” At 827 pages, DeLillo packs his dense novel full of fascinating characters, richly detailed locations, and enough emotional heft to carry at least five books. DeLillo, along with Cormac McCarthy, is rightly considered one of the titans of late twentieth century American literature. His prose is straightforward and unadorned, yet his language is so evocative and descriptive that you can feel everything he writes. His brilliance lies in his ability to probe the psyche of a person, a nation, an event, or even an object. A master of aesthetics, DeLillo is a pointillist painter with words.

While DeLillo can hone in on a moment and extrapolate reams of data to understand that moment from all angles, he still manages to paint a sweeping picture of Cold War America. Told in reverse-chronological order, Underworld begins in the modern day (which was then the late 90’s) and goes backwards through the decades until 1951. The prologue, practically a novella, focuses on a fateful day in 1951 when “the shot heard round the world” took place. The “shot” refers to a baseball home run during a playoff game between the New York Dodgers and Giants, which, coincidentally--amazingly--took place the same day the Soviet Union exploded their first atomic bomb. Truth is stranger than fiction, but DeLillo uses the day to capture the grandeur, paranoia, and interconnectedness that follows in the rest of the novel.

The home run baseball from that 1951 game connects most of the players in the novel. DeLillo retraces the baseball’s ownership through the decades, going from a local Bronx man to a memorabilia collector to one of the protagonists, a man named Nick Shay. Nick, originally from the Bronx, lives in Arizona where he works for a waste management company, specializing in storing nuclear waste. A soul adrift in the American West, Nick is burdened with a tragic past, much like his country. And like America, he is also burdened with an existential crisis, unsure of the future and unsure how to define himself in this new, modern age.

It’s nearly impossible to summarize the plot, not only because there are many subplots, but because doing so would take so much time that you’d be better off just reading the book. The novel is composed of vignettes, snapshots in time that, when stitched together, tell the story of its characters. Each chapter could work as its own short story, which, for me, made reading the long novel breezy and refreshing. Rather than being taxed with remembering who’s who and what’s what, I was able to enjoy each chapter as its own pearl. In fact, what’s important isn’t necessarily plot points, but the truths behind the stories. On practically every page you could find DeLillo’s thesis statement and also a universal truth (sometimes they’re one in the same). In 827 pages, you would hope that some sentences jump out at you, but in Underworld you get more than you anticipate, and each gem snaps your head back with its profound wisdom.

What general truths, then, does the novel espouse? It’s easy to forget that the 1990s were an innocent age. America, emerging victorious from the Cold War, was the lone superpower. There were little or no threats looming over our heads, and the fear of total annihilation suddenly disappeared overnight. America was in a bubble, a still limbo where we didn’t know our place in the world. We had time to reflect back on the past fifty years, when nuclear bombs were the norm. In the 90s, as in today, with enough time and distance, the thought of a nuclear warhead raining down on us, destroying civilization, seemed preposterous. It was mad. It was also very real. But, despite the fear of global meltdown, people went on living their lives.

Underworld examines those unsung heroes of the Cold War: the everyday people. The men and women who scraped by, trying to make sense of their own purpose while trying to make sense of the hectic, chaotic world around them.

Now, though, in a post-9/11 world, we’re thrown into a different “Us vs. Them” mentality. The world is again in chaos (is it ever not?), and we’re slowly (hopefully) emerging from the terrible shadow of fear. So, while the idea of Underworld may seem quaint and dated now, we can still appreciate its message. In fact, by reading the chapters that take place in the 90s we can see both a prescience and a timelessness in the way DeLillo imagines a nation as eerily paranoid about the future. And today, with the prospect of a nuclear Iran, the novel regains its immediacy.

While DeLillo easily paints a maco picture, he specializes in the micro moments. Interior thoughts, small conversations, quiet reveries, even the minute description of a work of art: these moments make up the underworld of our existence. DeLillo captures them effortlessly, almost stream-of-consciousness, which made the novel flow quickly.

Though I don’t know for sure, parts (especially later parts of the novel) felt autobiographical to me. DeLillo was born and raised in the Bronx, in an Italian-American family, much like Nick Shay. The later chapters that take place primarily in the 1950s Bronx felt a bit removed from the rest of the novel. It was a little too specific, a little too much of a departure from the grand scheme of the rest of the book. Too much time was focused on certain characters while we lost track of others during these chapters, but it’s hard to complain given that the writing and the characterization were still top notch.

DeLillo brings his story back to the present at the very end, and he tries to tie everything (technology included) together in a way that does work, but it actually feels a little quaint given the age we live in now.

There is, of course, a lot more that can be said about Underworld. It’s long, but well worth your time (and I’m not just saying that to make myself feel better about the time I spent on it). It’s a big book and a Big Book, one deserving of all of the praise heaped on it (in 2006, a group of prominent writers named it the number two book in the past 25 years, behind Toni Morrison’s Beloved).

If you see a ragged copy of Underworld in a used bookstore or see the book littering a for sale rack, pick up a copy. Or order a new one and keep it on hand. The small stories that get tucked away shouldn’t be lost forever. Sometimes, they’re the stories that really matter.

*In case you were wondering, this has nothing to do with the vampire vs. werewolf movies of the same name.

Book Review: Glimmerglass

When all I needed was to get away from my life, sink my teeth into a good book and be transported, Glimmerglass by Jenna Black was the answer to my prayers. Not only is Black's world-building believable and seamless, her story filled with high-stakes adventure and exciting duplicity, but her grasp of the teenage voice, of the everyday struggles of dealing with alcoholism, single-parenthood, and feeling like you don't belong is astounding.

When I met Dana on page one I was hooked. I could already relate to her and nothing had even happened yet. The power of her emotions was palpable, and I wanted to turn the pages just to know where her journey was taking her. And then, to my extreme delight, the rest of the story exceeded any expectation I could have had.

Normal: It's all she’s ever wanted to be, but it couldn’t be further from her grasp...

Dana Hathaway doesn’t know it yet, but she’s in big trouble. When her alcoholic mom shows up at her voice recital drunk, again, Dana decides she’s had enough and runs away to find her mysterious father in Avalon: the only place on Earth where the regular, everyday world and the captivating, magical world of Faerie intersect. But from the moment Dana sets foot in Avalon, everything goes wrong, for it turns out she isn't just an ordinary teenage girl—she's a Faeriewalker, a rare individual who can travel between both worlds, and the only person who can bring magic into the human world and technology into Faerie.

Soon, Dana finds herself tangled up in a cutthroat game of Fae politics. Someone's trying to kill her, and everyone seems to want something from her, from her newfound friends and family to Ethan, the hot Fae guy Dana figures she’ll never have a chance with…until she does. Caught between two worlds, Dana isn’t sure where she’ll ever fit in and who can be trusted, not to mention if her world will ever be normal again... (Cover copy, St. Martin's Griffin)

Charming, witty, and intelligent, Black's writing is brilliant and readable, keeping me in rapt attention as I followed Dana, Noah, and Kimber through the streets of Avalon. I zipped through this book in four days, much quicker than I had any book in a while, and found myself disappointed to put it away every time I had to stop reading for the day.

The only exception to my glowing review of this wonderful book is that the ending left me a bit unsatisfied, with the loose ends all still dangling and the necessity of a sequel very clear. Cliffhanger endings, in general, I don't have too much contention with...if it's done in such a way that I'm still satisfied that the book was complete enough in itself. Sure, I'll know another book in the series is to come, but when I close the binding, I need to be able to see the story as it's own whole. Glimmerglass left me unable to do that, my love for the story suddenly being outshined by my shock at the abrupt ending.

Looking back (I finished the book about a month ago *blush*), it's the love that I still recall--the phenomenal writing, the nonstop thrill, the depth of emotion. With that in mind I can wholeheartedly recommend this read to any fantasy or YA lover. And you can bet your bottom dollar that I'll be snagging a copy of the next book, Shadowspell, as soon as it's released in early 2011.

The Last Word: A bright and bewitching page-turner with enough magic to draw a reader happily under its spell despite a somewhat surprising and unfinished ending.

Book Review: Freakonomics

Freakonomics is a book I, quite frankly, never thought I would read. It's not really my thing. Data, statistics, history, economics? *shudder* I've never been able to follow it all. In fact, it usually just confuses me more and makes me feel kind of dumb as a result.

But for the first time, I understood the previously unfathomable.

Co-authors Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt explain their findings with ease, putting their theories and results into layman's terms without talking down to the reader (one of my big issues with a good deal of non-fiction). They also use smart, dry humor to keep you entertained while simultaneously making you really think, at times even offering up the data and letting you see if you can find the correlation on your own before they explain it to you. I'll admit I couldn't figure them out myself, though it was nice that they let me try!

Furthermore, the topics Dubner and Levitt tackle are unique and relatable (well, except for the whole sumo wrestling thing...). I did, however, feel at times like they were beating a dead horse. The chapters were lengthy and the duo would still be arguing their stance and presenting data long after their point was made. As a result, my interest waned a bit about two-thirds through every chapter.

I also would've liked a little more variety in terms of the subjectmatter, but the bonus material in the backmatter whetted that appetite quite well. After an article summarizing everything that I had just read, that is. It was a little overkill in that respect. However, if I really want a wider array of topics, I can always check out the "Freakonomics" blog on the New York Times website or snag a copy of Superfreakonomics, the follow-up to their first revolutionary bestseller.

The Last Word: If you haven't read Freakonomics yet, I'd highly recommend it, even if you avoid non-fiction like the plague. It's interesting brain food.

Guest Blogger, LG: Book Review - "The Carrie Diaries"

I came to the "Sex and the City" phenom as the show was wrapping up its TV run. My family didn't have cable, but when I got to college and one of my friends had the first two seasons on VHS, we'd throw viewing parties. Though we were all young and inexperienced in the dating department (all of us virgins at the time, too), we found the show utterly relatable--and totally addictive. I collected all of the seasons as they were released on DVD, and to this day still enjoy long marathon sessions watching the episodes. Suffice it to say, like countless women and men the world over, I'm a big fan of Carrie and company.

The lack of background on the characters always bothered me in the show, particularly with Carrie. I wanted to know how she became a writer. All you really get from the show is that her father left she and her mom when she was a kid. You don't know where she grew up, where she went to college, when she moved to New York, if her mother is alive, if she has siblings, or where she went to college--or even if she went to college. You also occasionally get snippets of information, such as how Carrie lost her virginity (on a ping pong table in some guy's basement in high school).

Last year I attended a lecture by Jennifer Weiner and Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell at the 92nd Street Y. Bushnell briefly mentioned her next project: The Carrie Diaries, a YA novel about Carrie in high school. My stomach flipped, my heart fluttered. I would finally get a look into the youth of my beloved fictional characters!

While TV-Carrie's man issues seem to reek of Absentee Father Syndrome, The Carrie Diaries takes a whole other direction. Fifty pages into the book, I felt betrayed. I felt like Bushnell had never even seen the TV show, certainly not as many times as I had. In the book, Carrie has two sisters, her mother is dead, and they're being raised by their overprotective father. Carrie is a little rebellious, which is fun to see, but there are quite a few disconnects between TV-Carrie and Bushnell's young-Carrie.

As a reader, I simply had to reconcile with this fact, and enjoy the book as a separate entity from the show. After all, Bushnell didn't write the teleplays for the show, she just created the characters in her iconic book of the same name. Despite the factual differences (Carrie graduates high school with her virginity in tact), the essence of the beloved character of TV and pages is embodied in this very fun read.

Young-Carrie makes so many mistakes that I found myself waving my imaginary hand, going "What are you doing?!" She's plagued by insecurities that every teenage girl faces, makes bad decisions, and possesses friends that are at times so bitchy (and real) that you wonder why she's kept them around and understand why they'd no longer be in her life come the start of the show (if this were chronological publication, of course). This young-Carrie is no Sarah Jessica Parker, and I loved that fact. Bushnell has stayed true to her original vision of a character that is completely hers, and lets readers wholly into the fictional world of a teenage version of one of the most iconic American characters of the last 20 years. Bushnell owns her character, and she never apologizes for making Carrie do or think anything that you may not like. This book is a complete success.

For fans of the show and the original book, I highly recommend. For anyone who likes a saucy little YA adventure, I also highly recommend.

Read an earlier post about The Carrie Diaries HERE

And don't forget to check out LG's blog, "Big Girl, Bigger City"

Book Review: High Before Homeroom

I'm very sorry for my absence, dear readers. Things have been a tad bit crazy here in the Big Apple.

However, in my time away, I had a chance to finish up Maya Sloan's unique and compelling young adult crossover novel, High Before Homeroom (the title of which was all yours truly :-p), edited by one of my colleagues.

Sloan tells the story of Doug Schaffer, a sixeteen-year-old boy who can't seem to fit in with anyone. Accept he gets along famously with Laurilee, a girl he works with at the mall and wants more than anything. But Laurilee only dates "bad boys." So, what is a dorky, unpopular kid to do? Adopt a drug addiction to meth, of course! But, Doug's master plan to get just effed up enough to land himself in rehab like one of the popular kids backfires in the most awkward and hilarious ways.

High Before Homeroom is as unconventional as they come, but in the best of ways. With its brutally honest and confused protagonist and its quirky premise, this debut novel--which hits shelves in June 22nd--is sure to intrigue. It also will give you a run for your money with twists and turns along the way that you never saw coming.

My only disappointment with this one was that I had a difficult time relating to Doug. Perhaps it's because I'm a girl or maybe it's because of my pretty straight-laced views of drugs, but I definitely would've liked to feel more connected to him and really understand what he was thinking and feeling. Also, most of the characters are male, so in general, there's a bit of a disconnect. Doug is such an entertaining and open character though that I could certainly still enjoy the book, even sans relatability.

Last Word: When the time comes, grab a copy STAT. This is a book unlike anything you've ever read before. Oh, and check out the fantastic book trailer from S&S below! I won't be shocked if this one gets optioned for film this summer!

Book Review: Men and Dogs

I basically jumped for joy when I received an ARC (Advanced Reader's Copy) of Men and Dogs by Katie Crouch in the mail.

Crouch's debut novel, Girls in Trucks, was phenomenal and I'd been waiting for her sophomore attempt since the deal was announced (funnily enough, check it out here), though at the time I seem to have had slightly incorrect information. The announcement was apparently for her third novel--to come in 2011 from Poppy--so, I'll take this moment to retract my statement last August that The Magnolia League would be her second novel. But that's neither here nor there.

Set to release next month from Little, Brown, Men and Dogs is an interesting departure for Crouch. She steps away from the debutante world of Charleston, NC to explore the families outside of those circles. Specifically, the less socially accepted Legare family with all their dirty little secrets.

Hannah's father disappearred before her twelfth birthday, and she's been convinced he's alive somewhere ever since, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Escaping to California for college, Hannah never stops searching for her missing dad, trying to fill the hole his supposed abandonment left in her heart. She also never stops messing up her own life. So, it's no surprise to her brother, Palmer--Charleston's gay veterinarian--when Hannah's husband leaves her, she falls off a three-story building after drinking too much, and then she's brought home to North Carolina for some R&R. And, of course, when she gets there, her breakdown just gets worse.

Hannah and Palmer are both extremely troubled characters but in realistic and completely parallelled ways. Though Hannah fits Crouch's M.O. of the somewhat unlikable protagonist, you can feel for her despite her emotional blockages. And Palmer, with his committment-phobe tendencies, is simultaneously a jerk and a sweetheart. I admire Crouch's ability to create such immensely flawed main characters that somehow inspire my love despite kind of hating them. It's a testament to the realism of her novels, something I loved about her writing from page one of Girls in Trucks.

The plot in this one, however, rang a little off key to me. Don't get me wrong, I certainly enjoyed it. It tackled some very difficult topics--faith, grief, abandonment, sexuality, etc.--and got the gears in my head turning, as all good books should. But something felt lackluster about it to me. Maybe I'm just reacting to the lack of real action in the story. Not a lot happens in the present day--it's more about past rememberances and how the characters feel now as a result than it is about action. While this is a valid choice for Crouch to make, the movement of the story felt a bit stagnant to me, so I wasn't as invested in it as I would have liked. Also, the somewhat generic premise of a woman returning home to sort out the way her past affects her messy present is nothing really new.

Crouch's writing, however, is what really drew me in here, just as it did in Girls in Trucks. Her unique and somewhat fractured writing style packs a mean punch and keeps you turning the pages. Filled with with humor, cynicism, and unexpected charm, Men and Dogs is an impressively written novel that makes you laugh, cry, and crinkle your brow again and again.

The Last Word: An intense and thought-provoking study of grief, loss, and reluctant self-discovery that any women's fiction fan should give a try.

Book Review: The Spellman Files

Everyone and their brother seems to love this debut novel by Lisa Lutz. Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, USA Today, the Baltimore Sun, The New York Daily News, People Magazine. Even Paramount producer Laura Ziskin (Spider-Man) snapped up the film rights. EVERYONE. And this time, The Spellman Files is exactly what the critics claim it to be: a hysterically entertaining mix of mystery and chick lit with a sharp, somewhat self-destructive heroine.

The Spellman Files follows a family of quirky--and at times, just plain crazy--private investigators with the eldest daughter, Izzy Spellman, as the guide. Lutz lays out a vast foundation for her series in this first book, really introducing you to Izzy and her hilarious family members with a wit and cynicism that you can't help but love. Mr. and Mrs. Spellman are parents one can only imagine have been exaggerated but really would take their young daughter down to the basement (aka the Interrogation Room) and question her till she admits to stealing that cookie from the cookie jar. Rae Spellman, Izzy's younger sister, really does make a sport of surveilling strangers, negotiating punishments, and bribing her siblings. David Spellman didn't take to PI work as well as the others though, becoming instead a lawyer--his family needs someone to get them out of their messes, don't they? Uncle Ray, an ex-cop, is a hysterical mess, who spends days groveling over his kidnapped t-shirt (Rae, of course), and his disappearing acts--known fondly to the family as "lost weekends"--are accepted by all involved, if not expected.

Then there's Izzy, our loveable heroine. Izzy's the kind of girl who would slash her parents' tires right in front of them to keep them from tailing her (though they naturally find a way around it), who would smash one of their headlights with a hammer so she could find them in traffic (they'd smash hers back), and who would go to visit her dentist ex-boyfriend #9 at the office just to nap in his comfy chairs and then request to borrow his BMW for a high-speed chase that can only end in destruction of property. Izzy will make you laugh so hard you cry, even while you're crying inside wanting her to love herself as much as we love her, despite her many, many flaws.

This novel is clearly character-driven with its glorious cast of characters, though the Spellmans' adventures throughout are certainly entertaining. The investigation of the Spellmans themselves makes for an interesting contrast for a family always looking through a magnifying glass at someone else, though it was under-developed throughout the first 3/4 of the novel. Izzy's detective work on the Snow case was additionally compelling, though it was wrapped up in a nice little bow by someone else. I'd much rather have seen Izzy actually solve the case correctly. It would not only satisfy me as a reader, but hey, maybe it'd up her minimal self-esteem a little bit, strengthening her character and showing some growth on her part.

I was also a bit disappointed by the lack of cohesiveness of the plot throughout. There is so much going on in was difficult to invest myself in more than just the family itself. I care about the story because I cared about the characters--not a bad thing necessarily, but it made me feel like I was missing a little something along the way. Moreover, rather than weaving the subplots together to make it feel less detached, the action is divided structurally by giving each subplot its own chapter numbers, so the book ends up with multiple chapter 1's. The sections are already jumping around in time, so why give the reader something else to be confused about? It's somewhat minor of a grievance though, as I still found this book to be highly entertaining and thoroughly recommendable.

The last word: A laugh-out-loud, delightfully fun debut that's a little rough around the edges but totally worth a read!

And check out the other books in the Spellman series: Curse of the Spellmans (now available in TP and HC, coming to MM in Feb. 2010) and Revenge of the Spellmans (now available in HC).

Book Review: Water for Elephants **SPOILER ALERT**

"Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen has spent weeks upon weeks on bestseller lists around the country. With its unique premise, readers and reviewers alike have raved about "the tatty glamour of Gruen's meticulously researched world" (The Washington Post) and how it "transform[s]a glimpse of Americana into an enchanting escapist fairy tale" (The New York Times Book Review).

While Gruen fills the pages of this novel with beautiful imagery and richly drawn characters, the hype around this depression-era circus tale is a little overblown. I was, of course, happily ensconsed in the depth of feeling toted around my Gruen's main character, Jacob Jankowski, and I found myself reaching for the next page again and again. Gruen's voice is enchanting and thoroughtly engaging. So, I won't make any claims to have not enjoyed reading this complexly detailed and excruciatingly emotional story. In fact, I enjoyed it quite a bit. But I do have some qualms about it that I can't seem to shake.

Firstly, I did not view Water for Elephants in the same light it seems as the reviewers from Publishers Weekly do when they say, "With its spotlight on elephants, Gruen's romantic page-turner hinges on the human-animal bonds[...]." Jacob, of course, had relationships with the animals in the menagerie, but I didn't feel that the book was at all about that bond. He's a vet; of course, he cares about the treatment of the animals. He spends all his working time with them too, so yes, he's going to form some sort of relationship with them. But this book did not hinge on that one bit in my opinion. Instead, Gruen's novel hinges on the personal relationships between the human characters: Jacob, Marlena, August, Walter, Camel, etc. To me, the animal relationships purely influenced the reader's feelings toward the humans. The animals liked Jacob and Marlena and they hated August and Uncle Al--their reactions amplified how I already felt about those characters.

The only potential horse of a different color here is Rosie, the lovable, hilarious elephant who finally gives August what he deserves when she hits him in the head with a stake, causing him to be stampeded. Parade Magazine goes so far as to call her the book's "majestic, mute heroine." But I can't wrap my head around that description, even with Rosie's role as the murdering, lemonade-stealing, Polish-speaking pachyderm. She doesn't even enter the book until more than halfway through, and while her presence in the book is suprememly entertaining and emotionally quite powerful at times (i.e. when August mistreats her and you watch from Jacob's POV), I don't feel like she plays that much of a role thematically. She kind of just does the dirty work for the characters, so the reader's opinion of Jacob (who possibly should have sliced August's throat like he intended to) wouldn't be soured and so there was no legal complications, while providing some comic relief.

I also am a bit bothered by the structural organization of this novel. I am all for flashbacks and parallel storylines when it's done with purpose, but here, I felt it was just done for the sake of doing it. The aging Jacob was reminiscing, sure, but he wasn't sharing the tale with another human, as in Big Fish where the father tells his son of his life in the circus. He was just remembering on his own, which seems a little bit pointless to me, especially given the fact that nothing really happens in the current day part of the story. All Gruen shows the reader here is a sad, lonely old man who has lost all his family (whether to death or to forgetfulness) and who pines after his youth. Maybe it wouldn't have bothered me so much if he told the story to Charlie at the circus; then at least it would've given the story a purpose. As it is though, it feels to me like Gruen was trying to use a technique common more often to literary than to commercial fiction, or that she used it purely to accomodate her prologue so she could tease that pivotal scene. Personally, I think the overall story would have been much more powerful without the older Jacob and had stuck to being a depression-era novel about a young man who lost everything and then found himself again in the most unlikely of places.

The other thing I'm struggling with after reading Water for Elephants is understanding why everyone thinks this is such an original novel. I do agree that Gruen did something special when she exposes the seedy underbelly of the circus in such a gritty and realistic way, but it's not as if it's never been done before. It hasn't been done often, granted, but it has been done. Big Fish, which I mentioned previously, is one very specific example. While Big Fish is a much more fantastical story that Water for Elephants, it still has a lot of the same basic plot points--a life-changing romance and an inside look at the circus. Gruen's voice in telling the story is what's so special here. Additionally, this story is more or less a patchwork of real-life events that took place throughout the history of the circus. While I am a firm believer in writing what you know, in researching a topic before you claim to know it, and by incorporating real life anecdotes and such into a piece of fiction, after reading Gruen's Author's Note I was incredibly disappointed that she took so much from fact and turned it into fiction. Almost all of the unique, humorous (and sometimes not so humorous) scenes in the book are based on actual accounts and not, as I had thought, a product of Gruen's imagination. It was a bummer to say the least.

The last word: A brilliantly written, but not-so-brilliantly crafted, and engaging novel with characters who stay with you long after you finish reading--it just could have used a little more editing.