IT’s MY CHOICE

As what I have written in my main blog, the first time I read a book with an autistic character (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon) involved in the story, I wasn’t impressed. And had I knew that “Daniel Isn’t Talking” by Marti Leimbach has something to do with autism, maybe, I haven’t touched it at all. But now, I’m glad that I bought it even though the book itself is expensive.

The Marsh family were astounded to hear that their son, Daniel is suffering from autism. Melanie and Stephen’s son will never be normal. He will never experience the things that a normal child would have. He will never have the chance to mingle with other kids, learn the wonders of the world inside the four corners of the classroom. All he knows is that the whole world is his.

Because of this, the marriage of Melanie and Stephen started to collapse like a building with poor foundation. Problems suddenly arise from nowhere, severing their relationship further. They argued every now and then. Stephen wants Daniel to be sent to a special school for autistic children but Melanie thinks otherwise.

Thanks to Andy and his unorthodox ideas. Melanie and Andy persevered hard to teach Daniel how to speak. They wanted to make Daniel’s life as normal as much as possible. They thought him how to speak. At first, Daniel could only manage to say a word in one go, but as they progressed, these one word sentences expanded to two, three, four, and even five words. They’ve also worked hard to teach him how to use the commode and even behave properly in the supermarket. Besides all of these, Andy became the comfort of Melanie while her husband is away, thinking of what would have become of their dwindling relationship.

Towards the end of the book, Melanie realized that she has fallen in love with Andy. But what about Stephen? The person that she married and promised to that only death would separate them? She has tried to save their sinking marriage countless times. And now, it’s Stephen’s turn to save it. Will he be able to reconcile with Melanie?

*****

What I liked about the book is that aside from the drama of the story, and as how the People had put it, the book was “… leavened with humor.” Because of this, reading the book didn’t make me bored. And because of the plot was interesting it made me crave to read and finish it.

Have you ever been to a circus? In my case, yes. A circus went to my school a few years ago, They don’t have any animals with them. No lions, no funny monkeys, no elephants. But they have various equipments. In Sara Gruen’s “Water For Elephants“, you’ll be able to feel how is it to live in a circus in the 1930’s.

The problem was that there were so many technical jargons about circus throughout the book. It’s hard to imagine what was happening in some parts of the book.There were also so many characters and they were introduced almost at once and most were not clearly described. There were also characters that were quite misleading. There was this character named as Camel. It was a bit misleading at some times because the reader wouldn’t know if the protagonist was referring to the man named Camel or to the animals. There was also this character named as Cecil. I thought that he was a female. I was wrong.

What I have noticed was that there were less conversations in the book compared to other books. Also, there were only little sudden twists of events. Nevertheless, I still enjoyed the book.

The first time I heard about it (thanks to NY Times), I was intrigued with the title. Strange title, isn’t? What a unique book. After reading it, I still didn’t get it why its title was so. I searched about it in the internet and it turned out that it was entitled “Water for Elephants” because of an incident between the protagonist and another resident of the nursing home. The latter said that when he was a kid, he gave water for the elephants, but the former doesn’t want to accept that. And they had argued about that.

*****

Jacob Jankowski was in his final year in college when his parents met a car accident. They died immediately, leaving Jacob alone. There was no money left under his name. Their house, he found out, was mortgaged. Because all of these problems, he didn’t answer anything in his final examination and walked out of the examination hall.

Then, he found this train and boarded it. Without him knowing it, he got inside the train of Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. Luckily for him, he got a job in the circus. He worked as a veterinarian even though he is not a real veterinarian. He fed horses, cats (e.g. lions, tigers), orangutans, giraffes, and other species of animals, he nursed sick animals, trained an elephant who could only understand in Polish.

But during his stay in the circus, temptations followed him. Barbara, the sexy performer was one of the temptations that surrounded him. But the worst thing was that he fell in love with Marlena, the wife of August. Why worst? Well, August have paranoid schizophrenia — sometimes he seems to be okay, but there were times where it would be stupid to get near him — and August is Jacob’s boss.

Join Jacob throughout his journey around the United States of America, involving love and murder. What a riveting book!