“What is it? What’s going on?” I said.
“Shh,” Grady hissed.
The band started up again, playing “Stars and Stripes Forever.”
“Oh Christ. Oh shit!” Grady tossed his food onto the table and leapt up, knocking over the bench.
“What? What is it?” I yelled, because he was already running away from me.
“The Disaster March!” he screamed over his shoulder.
I jerked around to the fry cook, who was ripping off his apron. “What the hell’s he talking about?”
“The Disaster March,” he said, wrestling the apron over his head. “Means something’s gone bad—real bad.”
“Like what?”
Review:
It is rare that a movie could motivate me to read a book and not the other way around, but every so often that seems to happen and I either am pleasantly surprised or highly disappointed. In this case, after rushing to the movies to see "Water For Elephants" with hunky Robert Pattinson, I dove right into the book, which has been sitting on my "to read" list for well over a year. To say I devoured this book whole, would be an understatement.
The setting is circus life during the great depression, yet the backbone of the story parallels the biblical story of Jacob. The plot is packed with the testing of one man’s moral compass, identification of self worth, mental illnesses, and a love triangle. one would call this "the perfect storm". The narrative unravels as a series of flashbacks by Jacob Jankowski, a "ninety or ninety-three year-old" man who lives in a nursing home. Jacob, a veterinary student just shy of a degree, is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie, where he meets Marlena and thus the drama begins. I highly recommend reading the book before you view the movie. There are a lot of major differences between the two and you will appreciate the characters and setting much more than if you saw the movie alone.
