Carol Birch - Jamrachs Menagerie

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2011 by Carol Birch

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.doubleday.com

DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in Great Britain in paperback by Canongate Books Ltd., Edinburgh.

Jacket design by Emily Mahon
Jacket illustration by Silja Goetz

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Birch, Carol
Jamrachs menagerie : a novel / Carol Birch. 1st ed.
p. cm.
1. BoysEnglandFiction. 2. WhalingFiction. 3. Exotic
animalsFiction. 4. SailorsFiction. 5. Male friendship
Fiction. 6. Survival after airplane accidents, shipwrecks, etc.
Fiction. I. Title.
PR6052.I785J36 2011
823.914dc22 2010038082

eISBN: 978-0-385-53441-3

v3.1

PRAISE FOR Jamrachs Menagerie

Transcendently researched, unsparing, and hypnotic, Jamrachs Menagerie takes us to the edge of endurance where it becomes impossible to distinguish the captor from the captive. Carol Birchs urgent and wise story goes far beyond any whaling expedition, plumbing the depths of how we create our own humanity. It is a thrill to welcome this remarkable novelist to a larger American audience.

Sheri Holman, bestselling author
of The Dress Lodger and Witches on the Road Tonight

In Jamrachs Menagerie, Carol Birch quickly sucks you into a world of the senses, from the filthy streets of Victorian London to the rolling hills of the South Seas. Jaffy Brown, the gifted narrator at the center of this mythic tale, rivals David Copperfield and Ishmael of Moby-Dick with his gift for storytelling. His rare old time becomes, in due course, a fable of friendship and a tribute to human survival. What a beautifully written and engaging novel!

Jay Parini, author of
The Passages of H. M. and The Last Station

Never mind not being able to put it downthere is a 100-page section in Jamrachs Menagerie in which you will not be able to breathe. Rarely have I read a book that so deftly marries high literary value with unbearable suspense.

Robert Hough, author of The Final
Confession of Mabel Stark, The Stowaway, and The Culprits

There are enough strange sights, pervasive smells and sounds, and curious characters to keep most novelistsand readersgoing strong for three times the number of pages that there are here She conjures something far stranger and less immediately graspable than a straightforward recitation of facts would allow. Rendered with exceptional control, elucidating the seesawing bond between Jaffy and Tim and the gradual disintegration of the sailors bodies and minds Birch has spun us a captivating yarn of high seas and even higher drama.

The Guardian

Gripping, grueling seafaring adventure.

The Telegraph

An imaginative tour-de-force, encompassing the sights and smells of 19th-century London and the wild sea Its gripping, superbly written, and a delight.

The Times (London)

Attempt to put your finger on how Carol Birch achieves her effects, and they vanish, leaving only a vapor trail of memories of things never known The reader is carried away forward in a rush of senses: smell, taste, texture, are all there on the page a masterpiece, the research so well integrated that the material comes across as lived events rather than history Such is the strength of the world Birch has created Compelling permits Birch to set her beautiful, eloquent prose to a new emotional register, at once wistful, wanting, and ultimately satisfyingly serene.

Times Literary Supplement

A gripping tale of adventure and anguish summoned from the deep A stirring Victorian-era tale so exquisitely written that your eye will yearn to linger over each sumptuous sentence even as your fingers scramble at the papers edge to reveal what happens next. Everything you could want in a rousing adventure is here culminates in a satisfyingly redemptive ending With my heart pounding hard and fast, I abandoned all thoughts of bedtime and kept turning pages until Id finished the novel in one whale-sized gulp Such is the power of Birchs writing that in common with her sailors, I felt a thirst no amount of water could slake. I felt salt-crusted and festering. I felt the mingled sadness and relief. Jamrachs Menagerie is a remarkable achievement, full of poetry and poignancy, adrenaline and anguish.

The Scotsman

Riveting Birch is masterful at evoking period and place Jamrachs Menagerie is itself a teeming exhibition of the beautiful and the bizarre, and its serious ideas about the relationship between mankind and the natural world are communicated with such delicacy of touch that they never slow down the propulsive telling of the story or dim the brilliance of the prose.

Sunday Times (London)

Carol Birchs storytelling excels Compelling Birch produces a sustained feat of imagination and diligent research.

The Daily Mail

An exuberant tale of sea-faring, exotic fauna, and drunken shore leave Her prose has an irresistible vigour her words sing on the page Jamrachs Menagerie puts its characters through the mangler and invites us to inspect the damageand perhaps to consider that ultimately such experiences are about nothing but the acquisition of scars. The novel is a vehicle for the delivery of somatic shocks to the readers brain.

The Financial Times

A delirious brew of the real and the made up A rollicking take on the story of the whale ship Essex mixed in with a dash of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Conrads Heart of Darkness Fearless storyteller of rare and sparkling originality What partly makes her so treasured is her pungent, visceral prose, so lively its almost edible.

Metro

Crammed with elemental traumas and high-grade derring-do a kind of primitive lyricism, in which ordinary mid-Victorian language is put to dramatic use Terrific As good as anything Peter Carey has done in this line and, in certain exalted moments, even better.

The Independent

Put Moby-Dick, Treasure Island, and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner into a pot, add a pinch of Dickens, and you will get the flavour of Carol Birchs hugely entertaining novel It is a roller-coaster read with never a dull moment.

Scottish Mail on Sunday