Review of Carol Birch’s Jamrach’s Menagerie

Now that my papers are done, I can contain grad school related reading to the eminently manageable 9-5, and leave my evenings and weekends free for books without footnotes.  The last one I read was Carol Birch’s Jamrach’s Menagerie, which I received as an early review copy from LibraryThing. I had received it a while back, but only managed to finish reading it tonight. And, I might add, I haven't had a cup of coffee all day.  But that's more because I forgot to bring my coffee from home to the library, so I wasn't able to brew my usual clandestine brew.  Although, a whole day without coffee, and I haven't bit off anyone's head yet.  This is good.


But, back to the topic at hand: here's is the review I wrote for the LT site:
Carol Birch’s Jamrach’s Menagerie takes the reader on an adventure that takes the reader from the banks of the Thames, feet in the mud, and maggots wriggling between your toes; to whaling lanes of the Atlantic, covered in the blood and blubber of a whale killed to meet the then dwindling need for whale oil; to the islands in the South Pacific, peering over the edge of a cliff, and watching giant lizards, “a mess of the like eels slipping wormily over one another in a must tussle over a foul carcass, a red and pink rag tailing festoons, the grinning head of which half severed and hanging back, revealed it to be one of their own” (134).  This horrific scene, a presage of things to come, is representative of Birch’s grand ability to weave words and create a rich tapestry of exquisite detai 

Our protagonist, the young Jaffy Brown, is only 8 when he is born for the second time, in the jaws of a tiger belonging to the London animal seller, Mr. Jamrach.  Jaffy becomes a yard boy in Jamrach’s menagerie, mucking out the stalls of every exotic animal that passes through nineteenth century London, and along the way, forming a complex friendship with another of Jamrach’s employees, Tim Linver. When Tim signs up on an expedition to capture a dragon in the South Pacific for Jamrach, Jaffy signs up as well, and the two boys join a whaling expedition, the last in a dying industry.  The whaling ship takes them  to ports of call all over the world, but finally to an island “neither big nor small, rocky green, high mountains of harsh brush jutting the sky above jungle and weeping bays” (123).  This is the island when they finally meet their dragon, even after catching their prey, the story is far from over.

Jamrach’s Menagerie is, at its core, a Bildungsroman, telling the tale of Jaffy’s harrowing voyage back to London.  Jaffy’s quest for survival leads him to understand the lengths to which people must go in order to survive, and leads him to understand why, despite its horrors, the sea holds such a sway over sailors who go, again and again, to sea.