»Water for Elephants

I enjoyed reading Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants, but ultimately found it unremarkable. The narrative use of tense (simple past for the action in the present, and present for the events of the past) seems backwards, not only because it shfits the emphasis in an awkward way, but because the unsurprising twist at the end misfires because of the tenses. The story is compelling, even if some of the character interactions make little sense (how do the dwarf and the college kid become fast friends all of a sudden, to the point of sharing custody for the old-timer afflicted with jake's walk.