Jamrach's Menagerie - Softcover

Carol Birch

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1921758953 ISBN 13: 9781921758959

Publisher: The Text Publishing Co, 2011

Synopsis

A thrilling and powerful novel about a young boy lured to sea by the promise of adventure and reward, with echoes of 'Great Expectations', 'Moby-Dick', and 'The Voyage of the Narwhal'.

'Jamrach's Menagerie' tells the story of a nineteenth-century street urchin named Jaffy Brown. Following an incident with an escaped tiger, Jaffy goes to work for Mr. Charles Jamrach, the famed importer of exotic animals, alongside Tim, a good but sometimes spitefully competitive boy. Thus begins a long, close friendship fraught with ambiguity and rivalry.

Mr. Jamrach recruits the two boys to capture a fabled dragon during the course of a three-year whaling expedi­tion. Onboard, Jaffy and Tim enjoy the rough brotherhood of sailors and the brutal art of whale hunting. They even 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, a feeling that is cruelly reinforced when a violent storm sinks the ship.

Drifting across an increasingly hallucinatory ocean, the sur­vivors, including Jaffy and Tim, are forced to confront their own place in the animal kingdom. Masterfully told, wildly atmospheric, and thundering with tension, 'Jamrach's Menagerie' is a truly haunting novel about friendship, sacrifice, and survival.

Edition details

• Publisher: The Text Publishing Co
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1921758953
• ISBN 13: 9781921758959
• Binding: Paperback