''Jamrach's Menagerie'' is a 2011 novel by

Carol Birch Carol Birch (born 1951) is an English novelist, lecturer and book critic. She also teaches creative writing. Life Birch was born in Manchester. Her parents had met in a wartime armaments factory. Her father, a metallurgist, also played trombone ...

. The novel has been referred to as historical fiction, since it features certain real life characters, such as naturalist

Charles Jamrach Charles Jamrach (born Johann Christian Carl Jamrach; March 1815 – 6 September 1891) was a leading dealer in wildlife, birds and shells in 19th-century London. He owned an exotic pet store on the Ratcliffe Highway in east London — at the time t ...

. The novel was short-listed for the 2011

Man Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. ...

."Two first time novelists make shortlist of six"
Book Prize website, 6 September 2011

Plot

At the age of eight, Jaffy Brown encounters a tiger escaped from the menagerie of

, wandering about London's East End. Taken up in the tiger's jaws, he is rescued by Jamrach himself, who then offers Jaffy a job. Jaffy loves working at the menagerie and becomes friends with another employee, Tim Linver. He falls in love with Tim's sister and the three of them grow up together on the streets of London. Several years later, when Jaffy is sixteen, he and Tim are dispatched by Jamrach to the Dutch East Indies, aboard a whaling ship. Under the charge of Jamrach's seasoned field agent, Dan Rymer, they have been sent to capture a " dragon" for the menagerie. The crew successfully capture the dragon, but on the return voyage it is set loose by Skip, one of the ship's mad crewmen, and after it bites a crew member they are forced to drive it overboard. Later the vessel is struck by a

waterspout A waterspout is an intense columnar vortex (usually appearing as a funnel-shaped cloud) that occurs over a body of water. Some are connected to a cumulus congestus cloud, some to a cumuliform cloud and some to a cumulonimbus cloud. In the co ...

and sunk, leaving only a dozen men alive, stranded in the Pacific Ocean in two whaleboats. The two boats make for the coast of

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

, and as the crew gradually begin to die of starvation, thirst, sickness and exposure. Eventually only Jaffy, Tim, Skip and Dan are left alive, and they draw straws to see who will be killed (shot) and who will shoot him. Tim draws the marked piece of paper, and Jaffy kills him, an act which will haunt him for the rest of his life. Eventually Skip also dies, and by the time Dan and Jaffy arrive in Chile they are half-dead with exhaustion and half-mad from grief and anguish. In the book's coda, Jaffy returns home, faces Tim's family, and goes through a long period of depression and ennui. He eventually returns to life as a sailor, and in his retirement constructs a bird menagerie of his own.

Historical references

was a real historical figure who operated a menagerie in east London in the 19th century, and at one point a

Bengal tiger The Bengal tiger is a population of the ''Panthera tigris tigris'' subspecies. It ranks among the biggest wild cats alive today. It is considered to belong to the world's charismatic megafauna. The tiger is estimated to have been present in ...

escaped and took an eight-year-old boy in its mouth. This event is depicted by a statue in Tobacco Dock in Wapping. Jamrach personally rescued the boy from the tiger. The ordeal of the crew in the lifeboats is largely based on the notorious shipwreck of the whaler ''Essex'', which a

sperm whale The sperm whale or cachalot (''Physeter macrocephalus'') is the largest of the toothed whales and the largest toothed predator. It is the only living member of the genus '' Physeter'' and one of three extant species in the sperm whale fami ...

rammed and sank in 1820. A sixteen-year-old sailor named Charles Ramsdell shot his childhood friend

Owen Coffin Owen Coffin (August 24, 1802 – February 2, 1821) was a sailor aboard the Nantucket whaler ''Essex'' when it set sail for the Pacific Ocean on a sperm whale-hunting expedition in August 1819, under the command of his cousin, George Pollard, J ...

after the drawing of straws. Coffin, like Tim, insisted on the deal being honoured. Ramsdell survived the incident and returned to life as a sailor.

References

{{Reflist British historical novels 2011 British novels Canongate Books books