Sarah Canary [Import] [Hardcover]

Karen Joy Fowler (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd (May 7, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 034057111X
• ISBN-13: 978-0340571118
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If You Don't Know Fowler...RUN to This Book!, November 25, 2002

By 

A. Wolverton (Crofton, MD United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sarah Canary (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (Paperback)

Out of nowhere, a white woman wanders into a Chinese railway workers' camp. The time is Winter, 1873. The place is the Washington Territory. The woman says nothing. (Nothing discernable, anyway.) No one can explain who the woman is, where she is from, or how she got there. This is the situation Karen Joy Fowler presents to the reader in this astounding, wonderful book.

`Sarah Canary' meets many different people on her strange journey and she affects the lives of everyone she meets. Four people in particular fall under her strange spell: Chin - a Chinese railway worker who seeks to take her back where she belongs; B.J. - an escaped mental patient; Harold - a huckster who wants to put Sarah in his traveling freak show; and Adelaide Dixon, a woman suffragist.

`Sarah Canary' is all about perceptions. Each of these four characters see Sarah as something slightly different. Their perceptions also cause their lives to each change in different and fascinating ways.

When I finished `Sarah Canary,' I realized that Fowler had taught me a lot about the times I live in now. Perceptions are the focus of the book, but Fowler also touches on the cultural differences of different types of people, prejudices, superstitions, and much more. After reading the book, I realized that I had come away with a better (but maybe not a more positive) picture of human nature.

From what I know about the history of the book, Fowler had a difficult time finding a publisher, not due to the book's quality, but rather the book's genre. It has none. It has been labeled historical fiction, Western, science fiction, comedy, mystery. It is all of these and none of these. `Sarah Canary' is impossible to pigeonhole. Maybe that's why I lot of people I talk to haven't read it. They're missing a gold mine. I hope you don't miss out. Read it and see why Fowler is one of the most gifted talents writing today.

381 pages

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Marvelous, original, great first novel, August 25, 2000

By 

Richard R. Horton (Webster Groves, MO United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sarah Canary (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (Paperback)

Karen Joy Fowler's first novel, Sarah Canary, is a marvel, an amazing, original novel about aliens, of all sorts, in the 1870's American West. It is extraordinarily assured, the best first novel I've read in a long time - indeed, in my opinion, at least arguably the best SF first novel of the nineties.

It concerns a mysterious woman (?), who cannot speak any recognizable language, who appears in the Pacific Northwest late in the 19th Century. A young Chinese man, Chin Ah-Kin, must try to escort her home, wherever that is. In their travels, they encounter a variety of alienated people: an Indian, a suffragette, etc. The story is thoroughly involving, very moving, beautifully written.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars eerie and haunting, unique and unforgettable, August 23, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Sarah Canary (Paperback)

_Sarah Canary_ is the tale of a mysterious woman found in the Pacific Northwest in the days of the American frontier. She is dubbed "Sarah Canary" because she has no English, and possibly no language at all: her only means of communication is a peculiar warbling song which does not seem to mean anything at all: and thus, people who encounter her interpret it through their own experience and filters.

In SARAH CANARY, Karen Joy Fowler takes the reader on a haunting journey through a long-forgotten time and place, where Chinamen are almost as alien as women who cannot speak, where spiritualists have the power to command huge audiences and change lives. Yet, it is a time and place with repercussions for our time and place, and the book resonates with contemporary readers.

The mood and feel of SARAH CANARY stays with you for a very long time after you've put the book down: you may find that you want to go back and revisit it at a later date.