Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler

Despite the title, this is not the story of Sarah Canary, the excessively ugly white woman speaking in indecipherable hoots and trills who wanders into the camp in the woods of a group of Chinese railroad workers. Rather, it is the story of those who react to the mystery of her appearance and actions, each imagining her as something different. Is she a demon lover, an escaped murderer, a wild woman raised apart from civilization, a woman driven to madness by a perfidious man, a creature of supernatural or extraterrestrial origin?

So this is the story of the young railroad worker Chin, who unaccountably feels responsible for Sarah Canary; of B.J., an escapee from a lunatic asylum, who follows Chin because with him he feels real; of Adelaide, a feminist lecturing about the right of a woman to enjoy sex, who believes Sarah to be the victim of a man's domineering. Opposing them in their efforts to protect Sarah Canary is Harold, a survivor of the Civil War's Andersonville Prison Camp, who wants to use her in a traveling freak show. Numerous adventures and picturesque characters ensue, as the trio of heroes tries to bring Sarah to a place of safety, thwarted by the war-damaged Harold. All of this takes place in the Northwest and in California right after the Civil War.

Many reviewers have caught the correspondences between this tale and The Wizard of Oz. (I wish I had not read reviews before reading the book, so that I could have seen if I would have caught it unaided.) We have Chin, who has suppressed his emotions; B.J., who has lost his wits; and Adelaide, who pretends to be brave but actually has no courage.

Many themes run through the novel (almost too many): A person can become an alien from mainstream society in many ways; stories are often archetypical and repeat themselves throughout the years; time may have progressed but attitudes not so much; women were, and still are, considered as almost a different species from men.

This book is often considered to be science fiction, but I can't imagine why, since Sarah Canary's origins, extraterrestrial or otherwise, are never revealed. Maybe she came from SOMEWHERE ELSE, but maybe not. I would classify it as magical realism, along with Murakami and suchlike.

The writing is often creative and includes some memorable bits, but as a whole, the story begins to drag somewhat with the piling on of adventures. Fowler did an excellent job of taking the reader into the mistrustful mind of Chin and the clouded mind of B.J., so that by the end we care about them. The ending is more than a little anticlimactic.

The final verdict--some good summer reading, but I will never read it again.