
Jamrach's Menagerie
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Steve West
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By:
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Carol Birch
SHORTLISTED for the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction
A thrilling and powerful novel about a young boy lured to sea by the promise of adventure and reward, with echoes of Great Expectations, Moby-Dick, and The Voyage of the Narwhal.
Jamrach’s Menagerie tells the story of a nineteenth-century street urchin named Jaffy Brown. Following an incident with an escaped tiger, Jaffy goes to work for Mr. Charles Jamrach, the famed importer of exotic animals, alongside Tim, a good but sometimes spitefully competitive boy. Thus begins a long, close friendship fraught with ambiguity and rivalry.
Mr. Jamrach recruits the two boys to capture a fabled dragon during the course of a three-year whaling expedition. Onboard, Jaffy and Tim enjoy the rough brotherhood of sailors and the brutal art of whale hunting. They even succeed in catching the reptilian beast.
But when the ship’s whaling venture falls short of expectations, the crew begins to regard the dragon - seething with feral power in its cage - as bad luck, a feeling that is cruelly reinforced when a violent storm sinks the ship.
Drifting across an increasingly hallucinatory ocean, the survivors, including Jaffy and Tim, are forced to confront their own place in the animal kingdom. Masterfully told, wildly atmospheric, and thundering with tension, Jamrach’s Menagerie is a truly haunting novel about friendship, sacrifice, and survival.
©2011 Carol Birch (P)2011 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
"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)
Transcendently researched, unsparing and hypnotic, Jamrach's Menagerie takes us to the edge of endurance where it becomes impossible to distinguish the captor from the captive. Carol Birch's 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, author of The Dress Lodger)
"Never mind not being able to put it down—there is a 100-page section in Jamrach's 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)
Jamrach'a Menagerie
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Overall the audible experience is 4 starts. There were two aspects of the book that I really liked. One is stories about how people lived in other ages. In this case it is the late 1800's in England. The second is stories of survival in desperate situations.
I purchased this book on recommendations of my daughters teacher. I started listening without any idea about what happens in the book. The narration is excellent and the story is very good. I have spent some time at sea and I thought that the sailing experience was well covered.
If I were to make any changes, I would say that book this could have been a bigger and better novel. I was left wanting more information regarding two of the characters. Mr. Jamrach, and Dan could have been given more depth, perhaps even there own intertwining storyline.
Overall good audible experience. A little dark, but well worth the listen.
Paul
Story of Survival Against all Odds.
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A wonderful book
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Fun & Meaningful
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Heartbreaking, Disturbing and Depressing
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Didn't pull me in
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