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Loading... Jamrach's Menagerie (original 2011; edition 2011)by Carol Birch
Work InformationJamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch (2011)
  
  ) markm2315 | Jul 1, 2023 |  ) Patsmith139 | Mar 15, 2021 | Degenerates into a very long tale of shipwrecked sailors dying after the ship sinks - after their expedition to collect a komodo dragon (lost overboard). (  ) siri51 | Jul 21, 2020 | Taking into account the subject matter, this was surprisingly lacklustre. I loved the beginning but it just turned into a very a dull adventure on the high seas. I don't even know how that is possible! (  ) Layla.Natasha | Nov 10, 2019 | As an 8 year old, young Jaffy Brown is confronted by a tiger on the streets of London. He reaches out to pat him but ends up in the tiger's maw. He is rescued by Mr Jamrach the owner of the tiger. Jamrach is in the business of importing exotic animals for sale to collectors or zoos. He sees in Jaffy a natural affinity for animals and in recompense for his experience offers him work in his yards. There Jaffy makes friends with Tim Linver and his twin sister Ishbel. Seven years later, one of Jamrach's customers is prepared to pay for the capture of a dragon for his collection. Jamrach's friend Dan Rymer is the man for the job, an experienced sailor and whaler. He asks the boys to accompany him to help capture and care for the animal on the long voyage. The boys are excited and see it as an opportunity to see the world and have an adventure. What ensues is nothing any of them could have imagined. The characters in this book are wonderfully drawn, the settings vivid and depictions at times confronting. Although fiction, parts of the story are based on fact. For me it was reminiscent of The North Water. (  ) HelenBaker | May 11, 2019 |
 In Jaffy, Birch has captured a boyish wonder at nature, a fascination with animals that any kid who’s ever caught a snake in the woods will be familiar with. As phantasmagoric as the mood of this novel gets, there is nothing in it that steps outside the bounds of reality, for it knows the real world is fantastic enough. One of the magical qualities of Birch’s story is that it gives that sense of Dickensian sprawl and scope even though it’s spun in fewer than 300 pages.We smell “the gorgeous stench” of England’s burgeoning capital in the mid-19th century and see its noisy alleys stretching out in every direction.  Seen in the round, Jamrach's Menagerie is a terrific example of the virtues of finding a style and sticking to it: as good as anything Peter Carey has done in this line and, in certain exalted moments, even better. When we are eventually returned to Wapping, minus a few fellow-travellers, Birch has spun us a captivating yarn of high seas and even higher drama. But she has also managed to leave us understanding why some of the sailors who did make it back to the comparative safety of land are, despite their ordeals, so quick to set sail again.
Following an incident with an escaped tiger, nineteenth-century London street urchin Jaffy Brown goes to work for Mr. Charles Jamrach, the famed importer of exotic animals, alongside Tim, a good but sometimes spitefully competitive boy. Mr. Jamrach recruits the two boys to capture a fabled dragon during the course of a three-year whaling expedition to the Dutch East Indies. They 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. No library descriptions found. 
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LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumCarol Birch's book Jamrach's Menagerie was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers.  Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.61)
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Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch
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