Jamrach's Menagerie

'Put Moby Dick , Treasure Island and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner into a pot, add a pinch of Dickens, and you will get the flavour of Carol Birch's hugely entertaining novel.' Mail on Sunday

An imaginative tour-de-force encompassing the sights and smells of 19th-century London and the wild sea. . . Gripping, superbly written and a delight.

Riveting. Birch is masterful at evoking period and place . . . A teeming exhibition of the beautiful and the bizarre.

A captivating yarn of high seas and even higher drama.

Magical . . . A sustained feat of imagination and diligent research.

One of the best stories I've ever read . . . A completely original book.

Carol Birch's fiction continues to stretch bodies and minds to breaking point . . . marvelous and terrifying.

Never mind not being able to put it down-there is a 100-page section in Jamrach's Menagerie in which you will not be able to breathe. Rarely have I read a book that so deftly marries high literary value with unbearable suspense.

Sucks you into a world of the senses, from the filthy streets of Victorian London to the rolling hills of the South Seas. Jaffy Brown, the gifted narrator at the center of this mythic tale, rivals David Copperfield and Ishmael of Moby-Dick with his gift for storytelling. His 'rare old time' becomes, in due course, a fable of friendship, and a tribute to human survival. What a beautifully written and engaging novel!

Birch is a naturally literary writer who can, with a simple image, evoke the deepest emotion.

Whenever I read of people moaning on about the dire state of British fiction, I think of Carol Birch (and people like her) who are writing such good novels . . . her forte is feelings , about which she is so acute.

Carol Birch is the author of ten previous novels, including Scapegallows (2008) and Turn Again Home (2003) which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. She has also won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and the David Higham Award for Best First Novel. Jamrach's Menagerie was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2011 and the London Book Award.