Jamrach's Menagerie: A Novel [J0166]

2012 - PB Excellent condition. Nineteenth-century London comes vividly alive in this story about a street urchin named Jaffy Brown. After a close call with an escaped tiger, Jaffy goes to work for Mr. Charles Jamrach, the famed importer of exotic animals. As the years pass, Mr. Jamrach recruits Jaffy and another boy named Tim to capture a fabled dragon during the course of an epic three-year whaling expedition in the East Indies. But when a violent storm sinks the ship, Jaffy and Tim are forced to confront their relationship to the natural world and the wildness it contains. Jamrach's Menagerie is a truly gripping novel about friendship, sacrifice, and survival.

From recent-ish Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "I loved this beautiful and almost magical novel-despite some long sections of brutal realism. The language is so evocative, with descriptive passages that put you right in dockside London or the Pacific Islands."; "Impactful, incredible descriptions. Captures ambition, wonder, optimism and the way that youth develops world views as well as the seeping in of dark realities of life. Loved the inner-generational and chosen family elements within. Great examination of the forms of entrapment and the line between respect and awe of the natural world and the temptation to be close to it in ways that may not allow for what is best for what we admire."; "I really enjoyed this, simply because it is a great story, beautifully descriptive with a coterie of interesting and deep characters."