Sarah Canary

Author: Karen Joy Fowler

In the Pacific North West of the 1880s a strange, silent white woman suddenly appears in a camp of Chinese workers. Where she comes from, who or what she is, no-one knows, but she has a profound effect on everyone she comes into contact with. From the inmates in the local insane asylum to the pioneering feminists in the nearby town, Sarah Canary is drawn to the outcasts and the downtrodden in this rough frontier territory. Yet she never speaks and she remains a mystery, even after the transcendent ending we cannot be sure whether she is an escaped lunatic or an alien, or possibly even an angel. Painting a remarkably vivid portrait of this very particular place and time in American history, Karen Joy Fowler manages to make it seem mysterious, so that the mystery of Sarah Canary seems to belong naturally here and it is only afterwards that we start to ask ourselves what she could possibly be. Why it's on the list: Depending on how you interpret the ending of the novel, Sarah Canary may not even be science fiction, and yet it feels profoundly science fictional. It is an extraordinary balancing act that Karen Joy Fowler has managed to perform in much of her best work. As a result, she makes us question what we believe science fiction to be.