Rating: 
Summary: Odd, but enjoyable.
Review: Sarah Canary was a love/hate reading experience for me. I hated the endless journey of the story, but was inexplicably drawn to Sarah quite like one of the outlandish characters in the book.The characters, Sarah's antagonists, were given to such extreme behaviour as a way of simple survival in what we would call marginal civilization, that Sarah was fortunate to be impervious to their asperities. Because of this, however, the other characters were absolutely manic in their pursuit of her. Adelaide to support her raging martyrdom, Chin to assuage the demons that challenged his self-worth and the indomitable Harold, well, as for Harold, I'm not really sure. There is alot of territory covered, literally, much of which is quite precarious - including a close call with a caged tiger. The historical vignettes between chapters were a welcome twist. However, not a satisfying ending.
Rating: 
Summary: Madcap spin - it's different
Review: 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:
Summary: Madcap spin - it's different
Review: 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:
Summary: Delightful magical realism in the 19th-century West.
Review: This is an excellent book. I don't think I've read anything quite like it. A mysterious woman wanders into an encampment of Chinese workers in the 19th-century West. The men there are worried, both for her--she won't speak and clearly needs help--and for themselves, because they could get in a lot of trouble if a white woman is found in their camp. One of the men is assigned to follow Sarah Canary--an arbitrary name, since she won't tell anyone who she is--and get her back to civilization, or at least safely away from them. In the course of their wanderings, he and Sarah visit a hospital and a hotel, and her reluctant guide has to protect her, and himself, from men who consider a crazy woman and a Chinese man to be easy victims. Fowler shows us a different side of the Old West, one of the parts that doesn't involve wagon trains, gold prospectors, and cowboys.
Rating: 
Summary: Uniquely delightful book
Review: This is one of the best books I've read in the last five or ten years. It has a remarkable sense of place and person, very vivid, very sharp. So many fabulous bits! Interestingly, the novel's "realism" varies as the viewpoint gets farther and closer to the central character, Sarah Canary. Sarah Canary herself resists "objective" interpretation: we as readers, and the other characters in the book, share the experience of making of Sarah what we happen to project on her. Which is, in some sense, precisely what the book is "about", though the experience of reading it is a whole lot more than that. I would recommend this book to people who enjoy literate science fiction, "slipstream" fiction, magic realism, and/or well-crafted prose. I would not recommend it to people who pick up their reading material at the grocery-store checkout line, who need everything explained, or who read to revisit one or another formulaic experience. Sara! h Canary is a unique, and uniquely delightful, read. Highly recommended to those who appreciate such things.
Rating:
Summary: Uniquely delightful book
Review: This is one of the best books I've read in the last five or ten years. It has a remarkable sense of place and person, very vivid, very sharp. So many fabulous bits! Interestingly, the novel's "realism" varies as the viewpoint gets farther and closer to the central character, Sarah Canary. Sarah Canary herself resists "objective" interpretation: we as readers, and the other characters in the book, share the experience of making of Sarah what we happen to project on her. Which is, in some sense, precisely what the book is "about", though the experience of reading it is a whole lot more than that. I would recommend this book to people who enjoy literate science fiction, "slipstream" fiction, magic realism, and/or well-crafted prose. I would not recommend it to people who pick up their reading material at the grocery-store checkout line, who need everything explained, or who read to revisit one or another formulaic experience. Sara! h Canary is a unique, and uniquely delightful, read. Highly recommended to those who appreciate such things.
Rating:
Summary: Really something special.
Review: This woman can wipe the floor with 95%
of her contemporaries.
Rating:
Summary: eerie and haunting, unique and unforgettable
Review: _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.
Rating:
Summary: eerie and haunting, unique and unforgettable
Review: _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.
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