Jamrach's Menagerie

Carol Birch has created a marvelous piece of literary legerdemain with this tale of young Jaffy Brown, a street urchin in late-Victorian London who finds his place as a wild animal whisperer with a dealer in exotic beasts named Jamrach. Eventually, Jaffy and his best friend/closest enemy Tim ship out on a whaler with a side mission: to find and capture one of the dragons rumored to live in the South Seas. You've read Moby Dick, you know all about the Essex; you can guess much of what happens next, but Birch's powerful imagination makes it truly new and truly riveting, and Steve West's performance is astounding in its range and sympathy for even the nuttiest characters. He delivers a gripping narrative with mesmerizing skill. B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

April 11, 2011
This wracking maritime psychodrama follows a young boy from his humble beginnings as a child laborer in late 19th-century London to the South Pacific, finding bits of whimsy and beauty in a chaotic story. Jaffy Brown's bleak young life in the slums takes a bright turn when he is carried off by an escaped tiger and wins the notice of Charles Jamrach, a purveyor of exotic animals. Jamrach gives Jaffy a job, and soon the boy is sent on a years-long journey to the South Pacific, where he is supposed to find a dragon. It becomes slowly evident that the dragon quest, which is dispatched in an anticlimax, works as a macguffin for a dark and drifting tale of woe on the high seas as Jaffy's expedition is beset by disasters sinister and otherworldly. Birch's writing is assured and enticing, and she's especially talented at creating floating, still moments amid the action, often as Jaffy pauses to foreshadow or ruminate. Readers will spend much time wondering where this gratifyingly bizarre story is going, though Birch's writing chops do much to smooth the way.