Orphans of the Carnival by Carol Birch

Published by Doubleday on November 8, 2016

Julia Pastrana has traveled by train from Mexico to New Orleans at the invitation of Matthew Rates, who met Julia when she was singing and playing her guitar at a wedding. Rates is introduced to Julia as being in the “entertainment business.” Actually, he manages a traveling freak show. Julia is expected to be a headliner because of her resemblance to a cuddly ape. Advertised as a “hybrid bear woman,” Julia joins a pinhead, a girl with no limbs, a rubber-skin man, and an albino black. It is 1854 and nobody has given much thought to the offensive nature of freak shows.

Julia feels she has been cursed, punished for the sins of the mother who abandoned her. Sometimes she wonders if she’s really a human. But freak is the last word that should be used to describe Julia. She is bright and funny and talented, possessed of a kind heart and a will to see the world. Despite her courage, Julia doesn’t dare venture out alone, for fear that people of less intelligence will attack her because attacking anyone different is what stupid people do.

Julia goes through another manager before she signs a contract with Theo Lent, who takes her to Europe. Lent is jealous and insecure, everything that Julia is not. Yet even in Europe, people find Julia unnerving. She scares children. Editorials condemn her for being seen in public.

Julia, while sometimes saddened, does not succumb to self-pity. She works hard and, like anyone else, she wants to be appreciated. Sometimes she is revered and other times she is condemned. The public tends to like her (their appetite for freaks is insatiable) but the guardians of decency scorn her. The novel demonstrates how little things change -- even today, the guardians of decency scorn everyone who doesn’t look, speak, and think just like they do.

Carol Birch based Orphans of the Carnival on a true story and presumably stuck closely to events that actually occurred in Julia’s life. The novel eventually gives Julia something like a love story involving Theo, whose personality is a complex blend of selfishness and self-hatred and obsessive love. In the end, he’s a bit creepy, while Julia is saintly.

Infrequent but semi-regular interludes reveal the story of Rose, a hoarder who has collected all the eyelashes that ever fell from her eyes. Rose lives in the present with Adam and their love story, like Julia’s, is unconventional. The brief interludes lead to a longer conclusion that tie the stories together. Adding the modern story is an interesting plot device, but I’m not sure its inclusion in the novel accomplishes its intended purpose.

The characters in Orphans of the Carnival are fully realized and that’s the novel’s strength. Its weakness is that the story hews closely to the facts of Julia’s life, which leaves little room for imaginative plotting. Birch let her imagination soar in Jamrach’s Menagerie, but here she reins it in a bit too much. Still, she brings the characters to life with emotional honesty that makes Orphans of the Carnival an easy novel to admire.

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Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch

Published by Doubleday on June 14, 2011

Jamrach's Menagerie begins in a seedy nineteenth century London that is reminiscent of Dickens. Charles Jamrach is a dealer in wild animals. When one of his tigers escapes, ten-year-old Jaffy Brown pats it on its nose and winds up in the tiger's mouth. Fortunately for Jaffy, the tiger has recently eaten and is sated. Freed from the tiger's grasp, the uninjured Jaffy is deemed a natural with animals and is offered a job with Jamrach, where he befriends the slightly older Tim and his sister Ishbel. When Jaffy is sixteen, he and Tim join Jamrach's best supplier, Dan Rymer, who has been commissioned to capture a dragon-like creature called an Ora. To that end they sail away on a whaler and Jaffy's adventure begins.

A fellow with second sight warns Jaffy and the rest of the whaler's crew that they'll bring on bad luck if they capture the dragon and take it on board the ship. The crew should have listened. Time itself changes with the Ora on board; they enter "dragon time." Their thoughts become muddled; Jaffy says "It was like an earthquake in the landscape in my head, and I no longer knew what I could count on." In light of the warning, it's obvious that disaster will strike; it's just a question of when it will happen and how bad it will be. It's bad.

Carol Birch's vivid writing brings this thrilling story to life. Reading the novel is like watching a movie in high definition -- better than that, really, given the clarity that language provides. Birch's style alternates between graceful and gritty, as the scene demands. Part seafaring adventure, part survival story, part tale of the supernatural, with elements of a morality play and psychological study, Jamrach's Menagerie delivers an exhilarating plot and convincing characters. As the climax nears, the story's intensity heightens; at one point I was reading through half-closed eyes for fear of what might happen next. Parts of this novel have been done before (to some extent, the characters' interaction reminded me of my favorite short story, Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat") but I don't think it's ever been done quite like this. Jamrach's Menagerie is powerful, sometimes gut-wrenching, but also insightful. There are traces of a love story here and even a coming-of-age story, but ultimately deeper themes prevail as characters confront their fears and struggle with unimaginably serious moral choices.

Sensitive readers (and those who screen books before letting their children read them) should know that there is a fair amount of salty language in this novel. It's all appropriate to the story (angry or frightened sailors don't respond by saying "oh gosh"); I mention it only because some readers will want to know of its existence.

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