"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.
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