I finished reading this book just after my last post here, over a month ago, and am still haunted by it. The title is misleading, and even the book jacket didn't prepare me for the dark journey within. Birch is British and has written 10 other novels, but this is her first published here in the states. What a writer--what a talented storyteller. I was very skeptical of the comparisons made between her writing and that of Charles Dickens, of comparisons made between her story and the story of the whaleship Essex and Moby-Dick. But they hold up. Compelling, tragic, and unforgettable.
from the Washington Post:
“Melville meets Dickens....Jamrach’s Menagerie is a moving, fantastically exciting sea tale that takes you back to those great 19th-century stories that first convinced you 'there is no frigate like a book'....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.....Another wonder of this novel is sweet Jaffy’s dynamic voice, which evolves from the wide-eyed enthusiasms of boyhood to the weary melancholy of middle age. In the early pages, everything comes to us teeming with the lush sensory overload of his 8-year-old mind, a riot of impressions and fresh metaphors.....But it’s the novel’s long second part that will keep you up late and make you feel distracted whenever you have to set it down and leave Jaffy’s world behind.....Although Moby-Dick and Jamrach’s Menagerie are very different novels, Birch holds her own with breathtaking descriptions of the harpooners in action, the gory rendering of the world’s largest mammals and timber-splitting storms that crash down on the ship like giant ax blades. Even her monitor lizard seems capable of carrying the mantle of that deadly white whale. After all, a whale makes a great canvas on which Melville can project all his philosophical and theological concerns, but for bloodcurdling mayhem, nothing beats a riled-up Komodo dragon....While Melville wraps up his epic a few paragraphs after Moby-Dick’s fatal strike, Birch pursues her tenderhearted hero into the madness that lies beyond mere survival. It’s a harrowing voyage that subjects the young man — and us — to ghastly deprivations and unimaginable choices, “stuck between a mad God and merciless nature.” For a new salty adventure across the watery part of the world, you won’t find a better passage than Jamrach’s Menagerie."
3 comments:
Yay, a new post! That book sounds really intriguing.
I have nothing to report as my reading has ground to a screeching halt; I'm still working on Hedy's Folly (it's interesting, but not a page-turner for me).
I'm finishing Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower. It's tremendously detailed. I'm reading the Nook version. This is a book that probably would have been better in print because the maps & other illustrations are often separated from the illustration headings, and often inserted into the oddest places in the text. That minor annoyance aside, t's a great book.
Christine, I'm on my way to the local library to pick up Jamrach’s Menagerie, based on your post. Following that, I've got Elizabeth the Queen (biography, Smith) lined up for the Nook.
Mary, I loved Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea (as you can imagine) and, of course, his newest book, Why Read Moby-Dick? Let me know what you think of Jamrach's Menagerie. And, I'm interested in your bio on Eliz, too!
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