This is one of those books that actually really surprised me. I think I was almost expecting a Sparks like book simply because there was a movie coming out. I mean lets face it - Hollywood doesn't exactly have exacting standards on what books they convert to film and it's generally the crappier the book the more eager they are to inflict it on the movie watching masses so I wasn't expecting much. Regardless, I actually wanted to see the film anyway so I decided to read the book first after putting it off for months before the looming release date forced my hand. 
 I really wish I had read it long before now. It is about as far away from Sparks' melodrama by numbers as you can get. 
 The basic premise of the story is that Jacob, a young man at college with aspirations to become a vet like his father, is called out of class one day to be told that his parents were killed in a car crash. Through the trauma of identifying them and the funeral, he then discovers that due to the depression his parents have left him no money and the bank has repossessed the house, leaving him with nothing. After attempting to go back and completing his final exams, he doesn't have the heart for it and simply walks out of the examination, totally lost as to what he will do now. 
 It is then that he jumps on a train, eager to just disappear and discovers that he is on a circus train. His vet training stops him from being thrown off and he meets Uncle Al, who runs the circus, August (who is in charge of the animals) and Marlena, August's wife who does the horse show. 
 He finds himself drawn to Marlena, while becoming more and more confused with August's behaviour - which is at one moment charming and friendly, and the next sinister. 
 It is when the Benzagi Circus comes across an abandoned circus and acquires Rosie, a Polish speaking elephant, that things pick up - August's rages become more and more violent (and thankfully you don't see much of his cruelty towards Rosie, but the implications are enough) and finally Jacob and Marlena give into their feelings after one particularly violent encounter with August that leaves Jacob battered and Marlena bruised causing her to leave him. 
 The story is being told by Jacob, so we get an insight into his feelings throughout the story - his grief and confusion as his life falls apart, his wonder at joining the circus, his guilt at developing feelings for a married woman and then his anger and eventual hatred for August and Uncle Al at the story reaches its conclusion. 
 The characters were well done and even the secondary characters had their own voices and stories and when things come to a head you can't help but feel happy about what happens after certain events occur. 
 The fact that the story is told by a 93 year old Jacob in a nursing home and we get the glimpse of the man then vs the man now is such a nice touch and it's sad to see the way his life becomes and because of that it's hard not to smile at what happens in the end. (view spoiler)[I'm not even going to try and pretend I wasn't silently cursing his family for not showing up to take him to the circus at the end, so the idea of him 'running away with the circus' twice in his life is just a nice, deserved parallel. (hide spoiler)] 
 This is definitely worth reading, the author has crafted two worlds - the scale and character of a travelling circus in the 1930's and the almost claustrophobic atmosphere of being restricted to an old folks home and in the end you understand how hard it must be for a man to go from one to the other. You relive his memories with him, yet it's tampered with the knowledge that while he remembers names of people he knew for a few months 70 years previously, that he no longer remembers the names of his grandkids. Life and old age can be cruel, but it can also be beautiful and this shows both sides of it. If the film is half as good as the book it will be well worth the admission price.