The book club is tonight. I think I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been meaning to go, though I didn’t make the last two sessions for various reasons. I did, however, read the books (which in the case of Fannie Flagg’s A Redbird Christmas was a complete waste of time—it was truly awful).
Tonight, though, I plan on going and discussing Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen. I really enjoyed that book—I read it in two days. Warning: Spoilers Ahead.
There’s a lot to discuss there, but I’ll focus here on one particular thing: the presence of the body, or the physical. The story is set in a 1930s circus, but is framed by the main character’s circa 2000’s recollection of those events. Naturally, he’s quite old, and his narration of that time centers greatly on his body. It essence, it doesn’t do what he tells it to do, there’s a sort of betrayal there.
The 1930s story also focuses on physicality in a lot of ways, from the description of the characters to the characters themselves. Many of them are defined by their physical nature, either by the narrator or by the society of the novel. For example, the main character befriends a clown who happens to be a little person. Naturally for the 1930s, his life had been largely defined by his physical nature. In a way, I think his death was, too.
The animals may be the purest example of this. Anthropomorphizing aside, they are characters who really only have physicality. The one exception to this is the elephant, though she is still based in physicality than any of the human characters.
Was it intentional? Am I even seeing anything legitimately part of the novel? Who knows. None of the “discussion questions” at the end touched on this topic. Still, it is said that writing is a collaborative process between author and reader, so that’s my contribution to the book.
[Edit: I lost all motivation to leave my house on the way home. It was freezing and windy. Not that I'd be walking to B&N where the meeting is, but I'm just not into leaving. Besides, my new stick of computer RAM arrived today. More on that later.]
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