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Title: Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler ISBN: 0-345-41644-9 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 01 March, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.6 (20 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: If You Don't Know Fowler...RUN to This Book!
Comment: 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
Rating: 4
Summary: Madcap spin - it's different
Comment: Sarah Canary.
Is a difficult book to categorize.
After all, it's all over the place, reminds me of the film "Dead Man" by Jarmusch, a long metaphysical walk through the Northwest woods. Or, as the author admits as an influence, "The Wizard of Oz," where earnest characters grapple with a land full of surrealist pratfalls like flying monkeys and intoxicating flowers.
An ugly, babbling woman-Sara Canary-is the centerpiece of the book. You can't really call her a character, because she has absolutely no human characteristics outside of her physical appearance. Call her a symbol instead. A blank symbol filled by the perception of the characters she does encounter in 1873 Washington: a Chinese railroad worker, a woman's suffragist, a lunatic, a frontier postmaster, and a travelling carnie. Sara Canary falls into the care of each at one time or another, and they chase her across Washington to fulfill their imagined or manufactured obligations to their Sara Canary constructs. (The author herself implied that Sara Canary is an alien improperly built to infiltrate Earth.)
At times the book bogs down in annoying viewpoints. (I was not crazy, for example, with the suffragist's point of view.) Sarah Canary herself can be annoying, because you want to pin an identity on her, you need to know who she is. And you will never know. And you know it.
The author also tries to be cute sometimes by cleverly adding anachronistic references to the present into 1873 thoughts. (The worst of which occurs when the lunatic recovers his doctor's watch from Sarah Canary's throat. He notices it's still in working condition and idly wonders-referring obviously to Timex commercials-if he should test the watch in other damaging ways, dragging it behind a boat, pounding on it with a hammer, etc.)
But get beyond that. Each character receives a unique voice from the author, and the language is compelling. It's interesting and refreshing and a good, fast read. I recommend it. Go for it.
Rating: 5
Summary: I came to her first book last --
Comment: -- and I may like it the best. Karen Joy Fowler is, by far and away, My Favorite Stylist. It's that demure sense of humor that gets under my skin like a fine-edged scalpel. It's that ability to assemble seemingly random tidbits to form a thematic whole (fans of _Wisconsin Death Trip_ will understand the pleasure in this. Fowler does it best, I think, in her short story, "The Elizabeth Complex"). None of her characters are saints, none villains, but they are all human, all the time, and Fowler portrays them with honesty, empathy, and above all, humor.
(On a purely personal note, I'm a native of Washington state, and I found it great fun running into all the familiar place-names, especially Squak, my hometown -- known, these days, as Issaquah.)
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Title: Sister Noon by Karen Joy Fowler ISBN: 0452283280 Publisher: Plume Books Pub. Date: 28 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Sweetheart Season (Ballantine Reader's Circle) by Karen Joy Fowler ISBN: 0345416422 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 01 March, 1998 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler ISBN: 0399151613 Publisher: Marian Wood Book Pub. Date: 22 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: Black Glass: Short Fictions by Karen Joy Fowler ISBN: 0345426533 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 1999 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Talk Before Sleep by Elizabeth Berg ISBN: 0385318782 Publisher: Dell Pub. Date: 01 October, 1997 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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