Karen Joy Fowler Books

Chin Ah Kin’s world is narrow and fragile. He works among white men who see him as invisible at best, expendable at worst. Every word he speaks in English is weighed and watched; every gesture risks misinterpretation. When the woman later called Sarah Canary stumbles into his camp, covered in mud an...

From Sarah Canary

Their journey takes them to an asylum, that grotesque microcosm of societal order. Here, the mad are those who refuse conformity, and normality is defined by obedience. Sarah Canary’s unclassifiable behavior becomes explosive within these walls. Physicians attempt to study her, to label her symptoms...

From Sarah Canary

Jocelyn, who breeds dogs and manages life with competent precision, decides to form the book club after her dear friend Sylvia separates from her husband Daniel. The idea is therapeutic—a literary cure for heartbreak. She chooses Austen as their guiding author because her heroines always navigate em...

From The Jane Austen Book Club

If Jocelyn and Sylvia carry the weight of middle age, Prudie represents youthful restlessness. She’s married to Dean, kind and reliable but dull in her eyes. As the club tackles 'Sense and Sensibility,' Prudie becomes the living conversation between the novel’s sisters—Marianne’s passion and Elinor’...

From The Jane Austen Book Club

When I first speak in this story, I am a college student trying to live quietly under the radar. My speech is careful, my memories fractured. I tell you that I used to have a sister named Fern, and that one day she disappeared. At first, I leave out the fact that Fern was a chimpanzee. I omit it bec...

From We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

We were a family like any other—at least that’s how it seemed from the outside. My father’s experiment had scientific logic: raise a human child and a chimpanzee together to study language acquisition and emotional development. Fern was my sister in every sense that counted. We shared a crib, toys, ...

From We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves