Elephants and Rabbits

I just finished two very different books, but funnily enough each had a fairly main character that was an animal.

Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen was a great story with a lot of action and interesting information about train circuses back in the 20s and 30s, but frankly, the animal abuse, sometimes implied, sometimes described in detail, was just too much for me. I won't belabor the point because I know I've talked to all my friends about it already, but this book made me just ache with injustice. If the characters had been real, I think I would have actually hurt the main animal abuser, August. I am so conflicted about circuses and even zoos sometimes. I understand that a lot of these situations keep the animals in caring environments and I like being able to see and learn about wild animals up close. But for some reason, human beings are just too easily cruel in these situations and it absolutely drives me crazy. In short, the book is a good read with some interesting thoughts on growing old, but ultimately made me very glum and I felt like I couldn't read anything for several days afterward.

I did finally pick something else up that I thought was going to be a bit more cheerful (I was wrong), called The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett. I have read other books by Ann and really liked them, she is a great writer and I will continue to read more by her. The main character in this book is a woman who has been in love with a gay man, the magician to her magician's assistant, for over 20 years. The man and his lover have just died of AIDS and she is left behind in the house the three of them had shared. She is a bit of a pathetic creature, I had to really work sometimes to respect her, even though I think she is intelligent and grieving. I found it sad that she wasn't able to own more of her own life, that she lived so vicariously through her "husband" Parsifal (they got married shortly before he died so she could inherit everything) and his lover Phan. The main character in the book was really Parsifal and you just learn everything about him through her, but she really doesn't have a voice of her own - until maybe the very end. I definitely liked this book, but I feel like if she was my friend I would get very annoyed with her as a person.

I'm not really doing this book justice, there are some interesting twists and turns as she learns about Parsifal's life and she ends up travelling from LA to Nebraska to stay with his estranged family. The things about this book that I love is that all of the characters are very fully formed - from the physical descriptions to the consistency of their internal motivations. These are complicated people who have made mistakes in their lives and need each other to get through to something better.

Oh, and she has an awesome pet Rabbit, named Rabbit, who used to be in the magic show. She loved him and I appreciated what a central character he was to her life and how the people around her loved him too. He reminded me of my little buddy.