JAMRACH’S MENAGERIE
By Carol Birch
Canongate Books. 334 pages. £7.99
ISBN 978 1 847 676 573
In the East End of London at some time during the 19th century, an eight-year-old boy met a Bengal tiger in the street and stroked its nose.
This event is the starting point for Carol Birch’s excellent novel, and it is an incident which the narrator, Jaffy, describes as his ‘second birth’. Encountering the tiger, which is being brought to Mr. Jamrach’s Menagerie, brings him into a new world of exotic creatures and ambitions: Jaffy is offered a job by Mr. Jamrach and he meets the entrancing siblings Ishbel and Tim. In time this job takes him on a voyage to the South Seas aboard a whaler seeking a specimen komodo dragon. It is at this point that Carol Birch turns to her other source, the wreck of the whaler Essex in 1820, and her narrative turns from fantastical colour to the monochrome horror of a shipwreck.
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