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
About this listen
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...
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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)
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The Trees
- By: Ali Shaw
- Narrated by: Ben Onwukwe
- Length: 18 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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There came an elastic aftershock of creaks and groans and then, softly softly, a chinking shower of rubbled cement. Leaves calmed and trunks stood serene. Where, not a minute before, there had been a suburb, there was now only woodland standing amid ruins. There is no warning. No chance to prepare. They arrive in the night: thundering up through the ground, transforming streets and towns into shadowy forest. Buildings are destroyed.
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Post apocalypse with a little bit of magic
- By Tam on 09-20-16
By: Ali Shaw
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Mr. Shivers
- By: Robert Jackson Bennett
- Narrated by: T. Ryder Smith
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Robert Jackson Bennett makes a stunning debut with this deliciously dark tale sure to hold readers in its menacing thrall. The grinding poverty brought on by the Great Depression is nowhere more apparent than in the untold thousands looking for work along America’s railroad system. But one man haunting the rail camps has been moved by an entirely different brand of desperation: revenge.
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From the Cormac McCarthy Playbook
- By J. Cons on 08-09-10
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Bloody Jack
- By: L. A. Meyer
- Narrated by: Katherine Kellgren
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Life as a ship's boy aboard HMS Dolphin is a dream come true for Jacky Faber. Gone are the days of scavenging for food and fighting for survival on the streets of 18th-century London. Instead, Jacky is becoming a skilled and respected sailor as the crew pursues pirates on the high seas. There's only one problem: Jacky is a girl. And she will have to use every bit of her spirit, wit, and courage to keep the crew from discovering her secret.
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Sometimes it clicks
- By Terry on 12-09-09
By: L. A. Meyer
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The Mosquito Coast
- By: Paul Theroux
- Narrated by: David Aaron Baker
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Allie Fox is going to re-create the world. Abominating the cops, crooks, junkies and scavengers of modern America, he abandons civilisation and takes the family to live in the Honduran jungle. There his tortured messianic genius keeps them alive, his hoarse tirades harrying them through a diseased and dirty Eden towards unimaginable darkness.
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Dreadful in every sense of the word.
- By Joan on 07-12-15
By: Paul Theroux
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The October Country
- By: Ray Bradbury
- Narrated by: David Aaron Baker
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Haunting, harrowing, and downright horrifying, this classic collection from the modern master of the fantastic features: "The Small Assassin": a fine, healthy baby boy was the new mother's dream come true - or her nightmare.... "The Emissary": the faithful dog was the sick boy's only connection with the world outside - and beyond.... "The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone": a most remarkable case of murder - the deceased was delighted! And more!
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The October Country
- By steven richard pohl on 09-17-19
By: Ray Bradbury
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Radiance
- By: Catherynne M. Valente
- Narrated by: Heath Miller
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Severin Unck's father is a famous director of Gothic romances in an alternate 1986 in which talking movies are still a daring innovation due to the patent-hoarding Edison family. Rebelling against her father's films of passion, intrigue, and spirits from beyond, Severin starts making documentaries, traveling through space and investigating the levitator cults of Neptune and the lawless saloons of Mars.
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Unexpected and tons of fun
- By Kate on 11-17-15
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The Monstrumologist
- By: Rick Yancey
- Narrated by: Steven Boyer
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Dr. Warthrop is a scientist who tracks and studies real-life monsters. Assisted by his 12-year-old apprentice, Will Henry, Dr. Warthrop discovers a pod of Anthropophagi and launches a hunt to destroy the foul beasts.
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Reader Be Warned
- By Eddie on 01-25-15
By: Rick Yancey
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A High Wind in Jamaica
- By: Richard Hughes
- Narrated by: Michael Maloney
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in the 19th century against a backdrop of island life and the vast surrounding seas, A High Wind in Jamaica is the gripping story of the Bas-Thornton children, whose parents send them back to England following a hurricane in the postcolonial Caribbean they call home. Having set sail, the children quickly fall into the hands of pirates. As their voyage continues, things take an awful turn
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Prose that reads like a Child's Fever Dream
- By Darwin8u on 01-02-17
By: Richard Hughes
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Something Wicked This Way Comes
- By: Ray Bradbury
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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A carnival rolls in sometime after the midnight hour on a chill Midwestern October eve, ushering in Halloween a week before its time. A calliope's shrill siren song beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. In this season of dying, Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery.
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It's so creepy
- By Midwestbonsai on 11-14-14
By: Ray Bradbury
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My Family and Other Animals
- By: Gerald Durrell
- Narrated by: Hugh Bonneville
- Length: 4 hrs and 20 mins
- Abridged
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The book is an autobiographical account of five years in the childhood of naturalist Gerald Durrell. The book is divided into three sections, marking the three villas in which the family lived on the island. Apart from Gerald (the youngest) and Larry, the family comprised their widowed mother, the gun-mad Leslie, and diet-obsessed sister Margo together with Roger the dog.
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Love it, but please mark as Abridged!
- By Meredith Ramirez on 09-14-21
By: Gerald Durrell
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The Plover
- By: Brian Doyle
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Declan O Donnell has sailed out of Oregon and deep into the vast, wild ocean, having had just finally enough of other people and their problems. He will go it alone, he will be his own country, he will be beholden to and beloved of no one. No man is an island, my butt, he thinks. I am that very man.... But the galaxy soon presents him with a string of odd, entertaining, and dangerous passengers, who become companions of every sort and stripe. The Plover is the story of their adventures and misadventures in the immense blue country one of their company calls Pacifica.
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Poetry, the sea and finally story
- By WA islander on 09-12-15
By: Brian Doyle
What listeners say about Jamrach's Menagerie
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- psnorb
- 12-01-11
Story of Survival Against all Odds.
No spoiler here.
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
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- CGY
- 04-02-18
Jamrach'a Menagerie
A remarkable tale, given added richness and dimension by the talent of reader Steve West
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- Denise K. Maguire
- 04-18-17
A wonderful book
This is a better "lost at sea" book than Life of Pi and that's saying a lot! I'm searching for more books by Carol Birch, because this woman writes like an angel! Her descriptions of the sea, and the love and hate among 12 desperate men in two life boats lost at sea, may be the most exquisite prose I've ever read! Ten stars!!
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Overall
- Jen
- 08-26-11
Fun & Meaningful
I gave this book 3 stars but I am a tough critic. I could easily see stretching that upward to 3 and a half. The narration is terrific and carries you along. The first half of this book is really, really good. The second half drags and you are forced to endure a bit of a long drawn out plot. If you stick around to the end of the book you will find a book loaded with meaning, told with thoughtfulness and pulled together nicely all the way from start to finish. A sign of a good audiobook for me is one that leaves me with characters that I cant seem to stop thinking about for days and this book does that for me. I LOVED the first half because it is fantastic, second half DRAGS, it ties together nicely in the end, and I loved the overall product. This book does not make my top ten but it is a fun, meaningful listen that I would recommend.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Nancy
- 07-20-11
Heartbreaking, Disturbing and Depressing
This book is beautifully constructed and written. The characters were well develped and for approximately 1/2 of the book, I really enjoyed it. There is really no way to make the rest of it anything but disturbing. It affected me so much that wished I had not read it. It is not unrealistic, but take my word for it, it is going to hurt.
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3 people found this helpful
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Didn't pull me in
This book has raving reviews on amazon. Though I consider myself well-read and flexible as far as what I can enjoy content-wise in a book, I did not get into this book. I went an hour and a half deep into it, but finally turned away because after an hour and a half there was no semblance of plot. Books like Moby Dick go on and on, but at least you know pretty soon from the start that the main point of the book is that Ahab is trying to catch a particular whale. I think a writer owes it to his reader to at least throw a little bait out there. Nonetheless, it is well-written, well-narrated and might be amusing to someone who can enjoy style over substance. And who is to say this isn't a marvelous book once things kick in eventually?
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1 person found this helpful