All work and no play makes Florence something something...

"It is a curious story I have to tell, one not easily absorbed and understood, so it is fortunate I have the words for the task. If I say so myself, who probably shouldn't, for a girl my age I am very well worded. Exceedingly well worded, to speak plain. I have hidden my eloquence, under-a-bushelled it, and kept any but the simplest form of expression bridewelled within my brain."

Lets start this off by saying that I freakin' loved this book. Think Secret Garden meets Edgar Allan Poe meets The Omen. Totally my thing.

In a remote and crumbling New England mansion in the 1800's, 12-year-old orphan Florence, who is our narrator, is neglected by her guardian uncle and banned from reading. Left to her own devices she devours books in secret and talks to herself - and narrates this, her story - in a unique language of her own invention. By night, she sleepwalks the corridors like one of the old house's many ghosts and is troubled by a recurrent dream in which a mysterious woman appears to threaten her younger brother Giles. Sometimes Florence doesn't sleepwalk at all, but simply pretends to so she can roam at will and search the house for clues to her own baffling past.

After the sudden violent death of the children's first governess, a second teacher, Miss Taylor, arrives, and immediately strange phenomena begin to occur. Florence becomes convinced that the new governess is a vengeful and malevolent spirit who means to do Giles harm. Against this powerful supernatural enemy, and without any adult to whom she can turn for help, Florence must use all her intelligence and ingenuity to both protect her little brother and preserve her private world.

This novel is written in a startlingly different and captivating narrative voice. It is amazing that this author, this man, can channel the voice and feelings a 12 year old crazy-as-a-coconut, trapped girl. The great thing about the narrative is that the voice of Florence reveals things to us that only we can notice and that goes unnoticed by Florence - people she thinks enemies we see as friends and the truth is revealed by her naive interpretations.

Please read this book...and tell me what you thought!

Roll Up! Roll Up!...

This novel by Sara Gruen explores the pathetic grandeur of the Depression-era circus. It is audacious material yet is sentimental. Water for Elephants is seeped in romanticism - both for a "brotherhood" feel of human relations and connections, for a harder but better time long past, for animals and their emotions. Although the narrative seems at times overly complicated and confusing, the feelings that the story evoke were enough to make me really get into this book.

Water for Elephants begins weirdly and gets weirder. Jacob Jankowski, a veterinary student at Cornell, discovers that his parents have been killed in a car accident. Aimless and distraught, he climbs aboard a train that happens to be carrying the second rate and seedy Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, and falls into a job as an animal doctor. His responsibilities draw him into the unpredictable orbit of August Rosenbluth, the circus's unsettling menagerie director, and his beautiful wife, Marlena, whose equestrian act attracts enthusiastic crowds.

Jacob immerses himself in the bizarre subculture of acrobats, aerialists, sword swallowers and lion tamers, that reflects a rigid caste system of the time. The troupe crisscrosses the country cannibalizing acts that have gone bankrupt in the Depression-era economy. After Uncle Al, the autocratic ringmaster, purchases Rosie, an elephant with an unquenchable thirst for lemonade and the inability to follow the simplest command, Benzini Brothers looks doomed. How Jacob coaxes Rosie to perform — thereby saving the circus — lies at the heart of the novel.It is August's mistreatment of Marlena and cruelty toward Rosie that is the most shocking element of the novel:

"I look up just as he flicks the cigarette. It arcs through the air and lands in Rosie's open mouth, sizzling as it hits her tongue. She roars, panicked, throwing her head and fishing inside her mouth with her trunk. August marches off. I turn back to Rosie. She stares at me, a look of unspeakable sadness on her face. Her amber eyes are filled with tears."

Gruen's circus, with its frank study in morality, symbolizes the warped vigor of capitalism in the western world. No matter how miserable or oppressed, the performers love the manufacturing of illusion, sewing a new sequined headdress for Rosie or feeding the llamas as men die of starvation in a devastated America. August's paranoid schizophrenia feels like an indictment of a lifetime spent feigning emotions to make a buck.

Circuses showcase human beings at their silliest and most sublime, and this allows writers to explore a world in which reality and the imaginary are blurred and anything is possible. I think Gruen has succeeded in transforming a glimpse of historical Americana into an enchanting fairy tale that to me was pure escapism.

What I am reading today

I am reading Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen,

and Florence and Giles by John Harding.

I am particularly liking Florence and Giles -

will review end of this week!