English Reading Groups Berlin - Jan Bild’s intercultural groups
Jamrach’s Menagerie by Carol Birch---shortlisted for the Man Booker prize 2011
Feedback from our meetings in January on 18 th ,19 th , 20 th and 25 th
Jamrach’s Menagerie is a very original and superb piece of writing but some terrible and awful events happen – proving too much for some of us. One group was quite negative about it. But most thought it was very good indeed, even wonderful, and some liked it very much but found it a difficult read. We all agreed that it’s an unusual and challenging novel.
I was born twice. First in a wooden room that jutted out over the black water of the Thames, and then again eight years later in the Highway, when the tiger took me in his mouth and everything truly began.
From the first few lines we were intrigued - what did this opening mean? What was in store? Would it be a historical adventure story or did the slightly pyschedelic cover suggest magical realism?
“I would never have chosen to read this book myself. The cover would have put me off. I only read it for the book group but I’m very pleased I made the effort.”
Quite a few of us made this comment.
Jamrach’s Menagerie takes us back to London in 1857.
I remember the jagged lanes with bent elbows and crooked knees, rutted horse shit in the road,... I remember the dark bricks of the tanning factory, and the rain falling black. The wrinkled red bricks of the walls were gone all to tarry soot......A heavy smell came up from under the wooden bridge and got you in the gob....
We meet Jaffy Brown there, a young boy living in the London slums,who is running along a street in London's East End when he comes face to face with an escaped Bengal tiger.
Mesmerised by its beauty, and entirely unafraid, Jaffy gently strokes the creature’s nose.
The tiger – fortunately, it has just been fed - responds by lazily flicking the child to the ground with one huge paw, and gently carrying him off in its jaws. (This is based on an actual event more than a century and a half ago when Mr Jamrach saved Jaffy by leaping on his newly-delivered big cat’s back). Thus Jaffy is plucked from the jaws of death by Mr
Jamrach – a German explorer, entrepreneur and collector of the world's strangest creatures.
Mr Jamrach rewards him for his bravery ( and probably to quell any hint of scandal ) with a raspberry cream puff and a job cleaning the animals' cages at his menagerie. Here, consignments of Tasmanian devils arrive to join Barbary apes, elephants, camels, snakes, wolves and all manner of birds; amid the squawking parrots and cockatoos and fluting bluebirds, it is the room of entirely silent birds, held in tiny, individual cells, that most

disturbs Jaffy. Each specimen is destined for a collector, and the lively trade between seamen, importers and customers is deftly drawn from the historical record: the real-life
Jamrach supplied London Zoo and wealthy gentlemen and celebrities.
So begins Jaffy’s new life, working at Jamrach’s Menagerie and developing what turns out to be a touching and instinctive rapport with freshly-captured wild animals and birds from all over the world. So he is perfect, as a teenage boy, to embark on the adventure of a lifetime.
A voyage to the southern hemisphere, to catch and bring home a dragon. A real one.
Birch’s description of poverty-stricken London life is worthy of Dickens . Her novel brings alive the smells, sights and flavours of nineteenth century London. Blood, brine and slime swills down the Ratcliffe Highway, the stench of the rotting fruit and vegetables and excrement makes everyone retch. In Jaffy’s words:
Crawling up and down the new sewers like maggots ourselves, thin grey boys, thin grey girls, grey as the mud we walked in, splashing along the dark, round-mouthed tunnels that stank like hell. The sides were caked in crusty black shit.
In our words:
I felt really connected. So much that I could smell the horrific stench and imagine I was right alongside Jaffy.
Carol Birch described the streets of Victorian London brilliantly.They came alive for me. It was as though I was there.
My great- grandfather used to talk about his experiences working as a lighterman in
Bermondsey. He said the water of the Thames was so foul that if you fell into it you ‘d be likely to die.
I was very impressed by Birch’s writing- from the very beginning. She is great at evoking period and place.
Carol Birch is a courageous writer- I was astonished that she had focused on such a difficult subject.
I was really gripped all the way through the story. I wasn’t expectimng such a dilemma to emerge. I so wanted them to be successful in hunting the dragon!
The structure was well developed. The hints of danger to come...I could sense that something strange and awful was going to happen.
I liked it but I wasn’t emotionally involved with the characters.
I was reminded of the Rhime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge.

Had the men become like animals? Not really. The crew was very tolerant and seemed to cope reasonably well with adversity.
I loved it but I had very intense dreams while I was reading it. One night I was looking for tigers!!
I liked it in the beginning but then it reminded me too much of Life of Pi.
What are the real qualities of a leader ? Jamrach’s Menagerie poses this question very well.
I found the language difficult at first but soon got used to it.
I didn’t feel the language was rough enough for seamen. There should have been more swear words.
I liked the mingling of fact with fiction – Carol Birch’s research was very thorough.
Life on board ship was very well drawn. I found myself thinking about the recent shipwreck in
Italy. But these men were in a much smaller boat and in far worse circumstances without communication etc..
Maritime law is different .Jaffy would not be considered a murderer as he had no other choice of survival.
Jaffy is clearly not blamed by his community for what happened.
Why the title Jamrach’s Menagerie?
Everything begins there. Jaffy’s life would not have been the same without the intervention of Mr Jamrach. He would never have gone searching for a dragon to the South Asian seas.
I would have enjoyed even more about the animals and birds. The section at sea started to drag for me. I could see why it had to be written in a different, sparer style but I preferred the exotic writing.
It is a fascinating and special book. The middle part at sea touched me to my limits.
The descriptions of nature and the sea were really, really good.
The passages about whaling were fantastic. Bloodcurdling but very realistic.
The warmth of the working classes was well portrayed. There is a lot of love, even if very little money.
Jaffy may be living in horrific circumstances but he still feels loved by his mother. His stomach may often be empty but his affection for her is undimmed. He is thrilled to get the job with Jamrach, partly because they will no longer be having to watch every penny.
Jamrach not only makes his life easier by ensuring they have enough money for food, he

also arranges for Jaffy to be taught to read and write. The tiger lifts him in his mouth and
Jaffy lifts him and his mother out of life in the slums as a result.
Birch’s backdrop is also bawdy and raucous, swirling with booze and smoke and populated by matronly whores., The novel revels in the gutter:
“The air was woolly in the Spoony. The floor was slippery with the saliva gobbed out all over the floor. And yet, look up into the rafters and see the smoke curling there so elegant, while two golden girls painted like dolls sing high over a pair of keening violins. Could there be
much better than this?” Birch has created an electric and cluttered cabinet of curiosities.
But when Jaffy’s long journey to the other side of the world begins, the story-telling moves up a gear. Life at sea on an old Victorian whaler is described in engrossing detail. Jamrach’s commission to catch a dragon is in part financed by whaling en-route, and the passage where Jaffy’s novice crew track and kill their first whale is repellent and fascinating by turns.
So is the hunt for dragons when it finally, dramatically, takes place. We are, of course, talking about Kimodo dragons, which were just a legend in 19th Century Europe. They may not have wings or breathe fire, but Jaffy’s prey are lethally dangerous, and must be captured alive. The risks are terrifying.
But at the heart of this story are the emotional relationships between the men manning the great whaling ship. At times violent, at others exquisitely tender and caring, Jamrach’s
Menagerie is essentially about male comradeship. The terrible ordeal suffered by the crew after the shipwreck is catastrophic. The only way to survive is to resort to cannibalism. And
Jamrach is forced to shoot his close friend Tim and then to eat him.
There is a mystical / mythological theme underlying the main story. Skip, one of the crew, is very sensitive and feels he has second sight. He sees hallucinations at sea and has warnings of the forthcoming disaster. Being at sea for months means entering an entirely different world from on land. Superstitions at sea are common. We discussed how weird some sights must be. The moonbow, which is a very rare sight, could well be interpreted as a sign. None of us had ever heard of a moonbow before.
We thought this a tender and exceptional story because it was written by a woman about men in extreme situations. Carol Birch also shows us the psychological effects on Jaffy – what would be called post traumatic stress today. Jaffy on his return home cannot cope for months. He lies in bed – not wanting to face the world or do anything. He eventually has to go back to sea and after some years he finally settles down. The ending is moving and optimistic. Jaffy uses his later life to set up a bird sanctuary and finds peace there - with himself, Ishbel, his friend Tim’s sister and his mother.
What I’ve seen and done and weathered is eternal, as much a part of me as my blood and bones. I saw skies of angels, heard laughter from the deep. The nightingale sobs. I rub the

place on my arm where Tim used to hold on to me on the boat. Still aches. He comes to me
sometimes. How could he not? He isn’t angry. He’s my friend. We are still in this together.
Jamrach’s Menagerie is full of so much action, emotion and colour and drama that it is impossible to give an account of everything. I’ve had to be selective. It’s one of the most intriguing books I have read recently. It stood out for me. I’m rather tired of novels about dysfunctional families and this made a delightful change. I don’t normally enjoy adventure stories but this was an exception.
Highly recommended by me and most members of the groups. It’s superbly written and very entertaining and exciting but disturbing and could cause nightmares! It is not to everyone’s taste. It’s a book you either love or hate.
Excellent for book group discussions.