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A review by michaelcattigan
Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch
5.0
Fantastic book which, as I mentioned before, has strong echoes of Moby-Dick, Life of Pi and Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Jaf has echoes of Victorian England urchins, living a precarious life amongst the sailors and whores in London when he is (rather tenderly) mauled by a tiger. Birch describes his rescue from the tiger as his second birth and it is with this moment that the book opens. The tiger is an escapee from the eponymous Jamrach's Menagerie and, as recompense, Jamrach gives Jaf a menial job in the menagerie. Making friends with another lad, Tim; falling in love with his sister; meeting Dan Rymer and becoming involved in his voyage to capture and bring back a dragon rapidly unfold.
For me, this was the moment when the book really got going. I have a huge weakness for maritime literature and was gripped fully from this point on. The sea is such a huge and powerful symbol of life, the world and of the threat of the unknown lurking beneath the surface of what we can see.
Jaf's ship is a whaler and the connection and comparisons with Moby-Dick are obvious, although the Captain is about as far from Ahab as it is possible to imagine: avuncular, accommodating and jolly English!
The dragons after which Jaf and Tim and Dan are searching are far from the mythical creatures of Tolkien: they are the Komodo Dragons and described by Birch in beautifully visceral and repulsive prose. The sheer bulk, power and alienness of the creatures both on their island and the one captured and brought to the boat is utterly compelling.
The capture of the dragon brings about another change in the tone of the novel: the ship enters what the somewhat fey or mad character Skip (who has echoes of Simon in Lord of the Flies and Pip in Moby-Dick) describes as "Dragontime" and the novel enters a phase where reality and dream and vision become more blurred and the dragon is seen as having cursed the ship.
This, in my opinion, is the strength of Birch's writing: she is able to create a world in which reality, memory, imagination, vision, dream and fantasy weave in and out of each other and in the final chapters of the ship where Jaf, Tim, Skip and Dan face increasingly horrific and appalling situations and become more and more detached from reality, her writing acquires the tone of the Ancient Mariner. The sea becomes a living character in its own right, the dragon or some other demon seems to be following the ship. For me, this Romantic quality of her writing overshadows even the hugely moving and harrowing events which Jaf faces.
This was a fantastic book and, in my humble opinion, well deserves its place on the Man Booker shortlist; and could well have been a deserving winner!
Jaf has echoes of Victorian England urchins, living a precarious life amongst the sailors and whores in London when he is (rather tenderly) mauled by a tiger. Birch describes his rescue from the tiger as his second birth and it is with this moment that the book opens. The tiger is an escapee from the eponymous Jamrach's Menagerie and, as recompense, Jamrach gives Jaf a menial job in the menagerie. Making friends with another lad, Tim; falling in love with his sister; meeting Dan Rymer and becoming involved in his voyage to capture and bring back a dragon rapidly unfold.
For me, this was the moment when the book really got going. I have a huge weakness for maritime literature and was gripped fully from this point on. The sea is such a huge and powerful symbol of life, the world and of the threat of the unknown lurking beneath the surface of what we can see.
Jaf's ship is a whaler and the connection and comparisons with Moby-Dick are obvious, although the Captain is about as far from Ahab as it is possible to imagine: avuncular, accommodating and jolly English!
The dragons after which Jaf and Tim and Dan are searching are far from the mythical creatures of Tolkien: they are the Komodo Dragons and described by Birch in beautifully visceral and repulsive prose. The sheer bulk, power and alienness of the creatures both on their island and the one captured and brought to the boat is utterly compelling.
The capture of the dragon brings about another change in the tone of the novel: the ship enters what the somewhat fey or mad character Skip (who has echoes of Simon in Lord of the Flies and Pip in Moby-Dick) describes as "Dragontime" and the novel enters a phase where reality and dream and vision become more blurred and the dragon is seen as having cursed the ship.
This, in my opinion, is the strength of Birch's writing: she is able to create a world in which reality, memory, imagination, vision, dream and fantasy weave in and out of each other and in the final chapters of the ship where Jaf, Tim, Skip and Dan face increasingly horrific and appalling situations and become more and more detached from reality, her writing acquires the tone of the Ancient Mariner. The sea becomes a living character in its own right, the dragon or some other demon seems to be following the ship. For me, this Romantic quality of her writing overshadows even the hugely moving and harrowing events which Jaf faces.
This was a fantastic book and, in my humble opinion, well deserves its place on the Man Booker shortlist; and could well have been a deserving winner!