Jamrach's Menagerie - Softcover

Birch, Carol

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1847676561 ISBN 13: 9781847676566

Publisher: Canongate Books, 2011

Synopsis

I was born twice. First in wooden room that jutted out over the black water of the Thames, and then again eight years later in the Highway, when the tiger took me in his mouth and everything truly began. 1857. Jaffy Brown is running along a street in London's East End when he comes face to face with an escaped circus animal. Plucked from the jaws of death by Mr Jamrach - explorer, entrepreneur and collector of the world's strangest creatures - the two strike up a friendship. Before he knows it, Jaffy finds himself on board a ship bound for the Dutch East Indies, on an unusual commission for Mr Jamrach. His journey - if he survives it - will push faith, love and friendship to their utmost limits. Brilliantly written and utterly spellbinding, Carol Birch's epic novel brings alive the smells, sights and flavours of the nineteenth century, from the docks of London to the storms of the Indian Ocean. This great salty historical adventure is a gripping exploration of our relationship to the natural world and the wildness it contains.

About this title

Product Description:

A spellbinding tale of survival and the high seas

Review:

SHORTLISTED for the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction

" "One of the best stories I've ever read; an extraordinarily good and completely original book."
"--A. S. Byatt, author of "The Children's Book "in a BBC Interview

"Beautifully written....Birch has created an electric and cluttered cabinet of curiosities, sprinkled with keenly heard jangles of singsongy dialogue.....as the novel takes off on a three-cord braid of adventure story, survival drama and coming-of-age tale.....the spirit is that of a high-seas adventure novel, a Victorian book for boys...[before] Birch begins to turn down the lights. Now we get a survival story as the crew is lost at sea. This is the novel's strongest section....hallucinatory haze....function [s] as a brilliant device.....Probably the most interesting element of this novel is not its horrors, but its colorful milieu, the late-19th-century interest in naturalism....And in Jaffy, Birch has captured a boyish wonder in nature....

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE
"Breathtaking. . . . Magical. . . . Melville meets Dickens. . . . A moving, fantastically exciting sea tale."
--"The Washington Post"
"Beautifully written. . . . Colorful. . . . [An] adventure story, survival drama and coming-of-age tale."
--"The New York Times Book Review"
"An exuberant tale. . . . Irresistible. . . . [Birch's] words sing on the page."
--"The Financial Times"
"Vivid, gorgeous writing and the most curious literary voyage since Pi Patel found himself on a lifeboat with a tiger in "Life of Pi.""
--"The Seattle Times"
"A masterpiece."
--"Times Literary Supplement"
"For a new salty adventure across the watery part of the world, you won't find a better passage than "Jamrach's Menagerie." . . . [It] will keep you up late and make you feel distracted whenever you have to set it down and leave Jaffy's world behind."
--"The Washington Post"
"Carol Birch is a literary original."
--"The Christian Science Monitor"
"An imaginative tour-de-force, encompassing the sights and smells of 19th-century London and the wild sea. . . . It's gripping, superbly written and a delight."
--"The Times" (London)
"Visceral and primal. . . . Effortlessly readable."
--"The National"
"One of the best stories I've ever read; an extraordinarily good and completely original book."
--A. S. Byatt, author of "The Children's Book"
"In Jaffy, Birch has captured a boyish wonder at nature, a fascination with animals that any kid who's ever caught a snake in the woods will be familiar with. As phantasmagoric as the mood of this novel gets, there is nothing in it that steps outside the bounds of reality, for it knows the real world is fantastic enough."
--"The New York Times Book Review"
"Powerful. . . .Harrowing is a mild word to describe the sea voyage that follows."
--"The Star-Ledger"
"A beautifully written and engagi

About this edition

• Publisher: Canongate Books
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1847676561
• ISBN 13: 9781847676566
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352