One of them is a nice sweet man called Mr.

It is way too sad to read these stories about circuses that can’t sustain themselves and the owners are cheapskates and the animals starve.īasically Love Let Me Not Hunger is a book about a little circus that goes to Spain, and while they’re in Spain there is a humongous fire (other things I don’t like: massive circus fires in fiction), and there are insurance issues, and anyway what happens is that most of the circus leaves the country to go find other jobs while they’re waiting for the insurance money to come in, and the animals and five of the circus people are left behind. If Sara Gruen was not hugely influenced by Love Let Me Not Hunger it would surprise me). On the other hand, Love Let Me Not Hunger made me feel mighty depressed, and if Water for Elephants had been a better book I imagine it would have made me depressed too since that circus is also depressing (P.S. Those were such nice, pleasant, friendly, un-soul-destroying circus books. You know what was a circus story that I liked a lot? Mirrormask. His books are full of sad people with matter-of-fact and depressing approaches to sex, who live hard, sad lives and then die miserably at Dunkirk. ‘Arris books and sometimes not even then, is not a happy writer. I guess I forgot that Paul Gallico, apart from his Mrs. I liked Jennie (a lot actually), and I like circuses, so I picked up this book at the library last time I was there and I thought it was going to make me happy the way Jennie (it’s called The Abandoned here) always does. We’re going where there ain’t any bloody tellyvision!”

Why, there are some places there that ain’t even got telephones! There ain’t been a British circus on the Continent in the last forty-three years. There’s telly in some of the big cities, but there’s none out in the country. While they had been loafing the winter away, he, Sam Marvel, had been on the job and had gone ferreting out the situation.

But you know where they ain’t got the telly yet? Spain! And you know how I know? Because I been there!!”He stopped to let the magnitude of this revelation sink in. “I’ll let you out of your contracts if you want, so you can get jobs with other circuses, but I’m telling you they’ll all go bust if this keeps up – just like the cinemas.

Love of Seven Dolls by Paul Gallico