I don't fit the world of everyday things, the people going about their daily routines, bed on time, up on time, dinner on time. I don't want to be part of it. Sometimes I long for a monk's cell, a hole in the rock, a bower in the woods, so my mind can flood all directions like water, the sea. Time to gaze. On waves. Rise and fall, the breathing of the world. First of all, even before I started reading this book, I had to look up the word 'menagerie' in a dictionary to find out what the title of the novel actually meant! I learned that menageries are what preceded modern-day zoos: they were private collections of exotic animals, often owned by aristocracy or others who kept a travelling circus. Carol Birch's novel starts off with a small boy living in London, in a wooden room that jutted out over the black water of the Thames , in the mid-1800s. Jaffy Brown is 8 years old when he is almost eaten by a tiger that has escaped from Mr Jamrach's collection ...