The Booker Shortlist: Jamrach’s Menagerie By Carol Birch

"I was born twice."

That will do for a first line. It's self evidently false, obviously, which has the handy implication that the author means for some kind of conceit. That's good. Saves confusion. This should ideally be followed by some kind of gratuitously symbolic encounter with a dangerous wild animal, or a flagrant breach of the natural laws, in true Rushdie style. In this particular case it’s an oral escapade with a tiger. It might be hackneyed, but it’s efficient.

I’m being disingenuously sardonic, of course. This would be just too linear otherwise. Jamrach’s Menagerie actually gets special dispensation from the above cynicism because the encounter with the tiger is actually one of several insubstantial seeds of truth from which the novel quite liberally stems. Secondly, and more importantly, the novel is supposed to be in the Victorian style. The trouble with being a modern author is that to be really exceptional you need an expansive vocabulary, which counter intuitively should be used as little as possible. It’s about transcending verbosity, perfect control and, as it inevitably goes against instinct, unimaginable restraint.

Inescapably however the filter does sometimes get a little blocked and, unless the subject wants to be excreting ‘ennui’s and ‘syzygy’s at dinner parties, the only recourse in relieving the backpressure is historical fiction. In terms of sheer floridness, little beats the Victorian stuff. And, when taken as being imitative of Victorian wordiness, Birch’s writing is actually positively reserved. Eschewing the more ridiculous language, her most indulgent moments are more descriptive than bombastic.

With this restrained indulgence Birch actually creates something that is immensely readable. The elements of Victorian stylistic self-consciousness are overlaid sparingly upon a far more modern text, and what could have been sickly and excessive becomes refreshingly different. The meandering text takes you through ‘jagged lanes with bent elbows and crooked knees’, in a very tactile invocation of a world of Victorian wonderment. Drawing on the sinking of the Essex, also the source material for Melville’s Moby Dick, Jamrach’s Menagerie owes more to the writers of the time than actual history and, recalling authors from Dickens to Thackeray, is a loving celebration of Victorian literature.

Unfortunately, being another first person narrative, it is another novel lacking strong external characters. Jaffy Brown is the young narrator, whose experiences take him surprisingly promptly to sea, away from the insubstantial presence of Jamrach and his eponymous menagerie. And, although there are an abundance of memorable companions at sea, the only significant other characters are Tim Linver, Jaffy’s childhood friend, and later Dan Rhymer, a sea dog and father figure. Even so, these aren’t really characters in their own right, so much as dimensions to Jaffy’s own character. The paucity of real characters is such that you do begin to wonder if, for all its beauty, there might not actually be any real substance to Jamrach’s Menagerie.

The lazy flow of it is misleading though, at some indeterminable point the carefree descriptions of Victorian London, faraway places and innocuous juvenile squabbles give way to a surprisingly grim reality. And you really do wonder, ‘how on earth did I end up here?’ The byline on the book sleeve reads, ‘When you go in search of adventure, travel carefully…’ The mawkish tone of which is entirely incongruous with the morbid transformation that the novel undergoes and, while being broadly accurate, belies the seriousness of the novel.

With this sudden change in fortunes, Birch shows her hand. In a disarmingly short period of time Jamrach’s Menagerie covers a lot of ground, traversing subjects as varied and extensive as friendship, ambition, jealousy, growing up, morality, mortality and madness. And with this understanding of the scope of the novel comes the realisation that this is actually a very impressive book. A conclusion that is no doubt delayed by the scenic and circuitous route the novel takes. The bizarrely proportioned movements feel almost random and have a lazy disregard for conventional narrative structure, it almost feels as though it goes nowhere. But it does, it’s just so startlingly original it takes you a while to realise it. It’s a book of understated felinity, and I loved it. It’s easily the best so far on this year’s list.

The Booker Shortlist: Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan

"The aftermath of the fall of Paris, 1940. Hieronymous Faulk, a rising star on the cabaret scene, was arrested in a café and never heard from again. He was 20 years old. He was a German citizen. And he was black"

Although black voices are now pretty common in modern literature, it does sometimes feel as though there is a tendency to rely on archetype. Black American voices, black African voices, black Caribbean voices and modern black urban voices often seem to be the range of it. This is understandable, of course. These voices between them cover the times and places where being black is most resonant; those points, be they geographical or historical, where seemingly the whole extent of black experience can be compressed into comparative moments. Which is always handy for a writer.

In seriousness though, there are parts of black experience that just don’t have an equivalent elsewhere. Not just in terms of black history, but also in human history. It’s probably fair to say then that the over-dominance of certain voices is simply a logical and inevitable consequence of this. The cost though is that, often, black people in literature are reduced to being symbols. They can stand for oppression and revolution, or be a mainstay of allegory, but not nearly often enough do they stand just as people. It’s refreshing then to hear a different voice for once in Esi Edugyan’s Half Blood Blues.

Or it would be, if the promised voice of the black, German jazzman, living in France ever actually appeared. Half Blood Blues really concerns itself more with its narrator, Sid, and his long-time friend and bandmate, Chip — both of whom are American. Hieronymous, or Hiero as it’s more often shortened to, is more subject than character and, even where he is present, is conveniently imitative of his older American companions. So much then for that original, new voice.

That said, really I can understand. I mean can you actually imagine trying to voice a black, German Jazz musician, living in France, in English. I can only conceive of it as part Louis Armstrong and part Die Hard villain. Not good if you want your work to be taken seriously. The quick fix of just making everybody basically American was probably the right way to go. And fortunately Half Blood Blues has much more with which to redeem itself anyway.

It would be ridiculous to neglect the obvious consequences of being black during such a crucial period of the history of persecution, and indeed the book relies on it to turn the narrative. It describes an often neglected Nazi outlook on black people and makes an important historical distinction between the Germans’ approach to ‘stateless’ Rhinelander black people and foreign black people. But, thematically at least, the focus of this book is actually on personal morality and individual psychology. Without giving too much away, the book is not dissimilar to Snowdrops, only minus all the bad stuff I said about that one, obviously. It deals with guilt and self-rationalisation, and has Sid develop a surprising depth of character during its course. It also sees his evolution as a narrator.

Sid’s mellifluous, rhythmic narration has a musicality to it that is well suited to his role as a jazzman. And its lilting flow leads you so easily through the book that it’s only with retrospect that you can really appreciate the extent to which Sid’s character has developed. As you see the narrator change, you’re forced to go back and re-evaluate your earlier judgements, which has the curious effect of forcing you to develop in parallel as a reader. It’s a smooth kind of deception, and consciously so — Esi Edugyan demonstrates the subtlety and grasp of craft that was so sorely missed in AD Miller’s Snowdrops.

Sid is the only real strong character in Half Blood Blues, with Chip acting as catalyst for Sid’s development, and Hiero being more ethereal and symbolic. Other minor characters revolve around Sid, usually performing some function between the former two. At first this heliocentric vision feels like a flaw. But with more reading, and greater hindsight, you come to realise that Sid is the narrator and this is Sid’s universe. It couldn’t be any other way, and Edugyan knows it.

Sadly, the book doesn’t quite go far enough. Like The Sisters Brothers, just as you begin to appreciate the seriousness of the novel, it ends without quite going to the depths it perhaps could have done. Half Blood Blues does still have a wider scope than The Sisters Brothers, and does go further, but you still finish it with a sense that there could have been something more to it. Nevertheless, it is an exceptional novel with a complex narrator who develops as a person, rather than merely as a symbol. A strong effort from a talented writer.