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Mister Sandman
The Canary family are unlike any other. Joan is exquisite, tiny, mute, plays the piano like Mozart and lives in a closet. Marcy is a nymphomaniac, while Sonja earns a fortune clipping hair-grips to cardboard and knits compulsively. Their parents keep their own habits secret for as long as they can.
268 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
18 people are currently reading
752 people want to read
About the author
Barbara Gowdy
24 books243 followersBarbara Gowdy is the author of seven books, including Helpless, The Romantic, The White Bone, Mister Sandman, We So Seldom Look on Love and Falling Angels, all of which have met with widespread international acclaim. A three-time finalist for The Governor General’s Award, two-time finalist for The Scotia Bank Giller Prize, The Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and The Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, winner of the Marian Engel Award and The Trillium Book Prize, Gowdy has been longlisted for The Man Booker Prize. She has been called “a miraculous writer” by the Chicago Tribune, and in 2005 Harper’s magazine described her as a “terrific literary realist” who has “refused to subscribe to worn-out techniques and storytelling methods.” Born in Windsor, Ontario, she lives in Toronto.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 95 reviews
May 26, 2022
I read this one weekend when I was at a friend's lake house at Lake Mohawk in Sparta, New Jersey. The soundtrack of the stay was Lionel Hampton and creaking bedsprings. It was a joyful time, partly because I was so riveted by the experiences of the Canarys. Gordon and his deep and desperate attempts to get himself some real sex; the consequences of this search for Sonja, his daughter; and the way Doris, his undesired and barely loved wife, copes with their new child Joan's odd genesis and her...Otherness. (moooo)
I don't think for a minute that you'll race right out and get it on the basis of those maunderings. I recommend getting it, though, and reading it without stressful commitments to other events or duties. I think it's so good a memory to me because it is one of the most pleasant coming-into-your-own family, without borders but still possessed of edges, stories from the 1990s.
I don't think for a minute that you'll race right out and get it on the basis of those maunderings. I recommend getting it, though, and reading it without stressful commitments to other events or duties. I think it's so good a memory to me because it is one of the most pleasant coming-into-your-own family, without borders but still possessed of edges, stories from the 1990s.
August 17, 2009
A novel that rolls around in its own eccentricity like a happy dog in high grass. Gowdy loves her oddball characters and the reader cannot help but love them, too.
June 8, 2010
The story of a family set in 50s-70s Canada; this unconventional family - closet homosexual Gordon; wild, lying Doris; brilliant, promiscuous Marcy; slow, overweight, happy Sonja; and genius, brain-damaged, beautiful, talented Joan - struggles with love, openness and honesty until Joan opens their eyes.
Recommended by Margaret Atwood and by Salon.com, this story had me expecting to be as spellbound as I was when reading Geek Love. However, despite the book's interesting perspective and plot line, the effort seemed a bit uneven. I took the sexual proclivities of all the characters to be an unconventional device that would allow comparison across the same playing field - none were what we'd call "normal" and by writing this from a sexual perspective Gowdy forced the reader to confront what he or she viewed "normal" sexual activity (or lack thereof). This had the effect of both being somewhat shocking but also eventually forcing a look inwards, especially as the Canary family is so likable! Gowdy does some brilliant work here - one example is Marcy's promiscuity, which literaly means that she generally doesn't discriminate; after a bit of trial and error, she moves from one partner to another before any hearts are broken - she is free w/ love - she doesn't withhold based on history, age, past, etc (but she does appreicate the cute ones).
However, the book feels a bit off balance. There are awkward sentences all over the book - I found myself having to re-read sections to figure out who "he" was and who "she" was; many of the metaphors were also awkward (too, a few were brilliant) but it caused me to mentally stumble, an uncomfortable situation for the reader.
Recommended by Margaret Atwood and by Salon.com, this story had me expecting to be as spellbound as I was when reading Geek Love. However, despite the book's interesting perspective and plot line, the effort seemed a bit uneven. I took the sexual proclivities of all the characters to be an unconventional device that would allow comparison across the same playing field - none were what we'd call "normal" and by writing this from a sexual perspective Gowdy forced the reader to confront what he or she viewed "normal" sexual activity (or lack thereof). This had the effect of both being somewhat shocking but also eventually forcing a look inwards, especially as the Canary family is so likable! Gowdy does some brilliant work here - one example is Marcy's promiscuity, which literaly means that she generally doesn't discriminate; after a bit of trial and error, she moves from one partner to another before any hearts are broken - she is free w/ love - she doesn't withhold based on history, age, past, etc (but she does appreicate the cute ones).
However, the book feels a bit off balance. There are awkward sentences all over the book - I found myself having to re-read sections to figure out who "he" was and who "she" was; many of the metaphors were also awkward (too, a few were brilliant) but it caused me to mentally stumble, an uncomfortable situation for the reader.
January 25, 2025
Real Rating: 3.5* of five (for this re-read)
The Publisher Says: Barbara Gowdy's outrageous, hilarious, disturbing, and compassionate novel is about the Canary family, their immoderate passions and eccentricities, and their secret lives and histories. The deepest secret of all is harbored in the silence of the youngest daughter, Joan, who doesn't grow, who doesn't speak, but who can play the piano like Mozart though she's never had a lesson.
Joan is a mystery, and in the novel's stunning climax her family comes to understand that each of them is a mystery, as marvelous as Joan, as irreducible as the mystery of life itself.
In its compassionate investigation of moral truths and its bold embrace of the fractured nature of every one of its characters, Mister Sandman attains the heightened quality of a modern-day parable.
I GOT THIS BOOK DECADES AGO, AND HAVE NO MEMORY OF HOW.
My Review: I read it in 1996 or so, loved it, and felt a re-read would be a fun thing. Queer representation has come a long way in thirty years.
I'm not as excited and delighted as I was in my 30s, and got more and more uneasy with the characters' poor communication skills, so I pulled thr ripcord at 50%. It's pretty well-written so I'm not warning you off. I'm just not that guy anymore.
It's out of print; there's an AI-generated audio version, should you wish to participate in the theft of authorial work.
The Publisher Says: Barbara Gowdy's outrageous, hilarious, disturbing, and compassionate novel is about the Canary family, their immoderate passions and eccentricities, and their secret lives and histories. The deepest secret of all is harbored in the silence of the youngest daughter, Joan, who doesn't grow, who doesn't speak, but who can play the piano like Mozart though she's never had a lesson.
Joan is a mystery, and in the novel's stunning climax her family comes to understand that each of them is a mystery, as marvelous as Joan, as irreducible as the mystery of life itself.
In its compassionate investigation of moral truths and its bold embrace of the fractured nature of every one of its characters, Mister Sandman attains the heightened quality of a modern-day parable.
I GOT THIS BOOK DECADES AGO, AND HAVE NO MEMORY OF HOW.
My Review: I read it in 1996 or so, loved it, and felt a re-read would be a fun thing. Queer representation has come a long way in thirty years.
I'm not as excited and delighted as I was in my 30s, and got more and more uneasy with the characters' poor communication skills, so I pulled thr ripcord at 50%. It's pretty well-written so I'm not warning you off. I'm just not that guy anymore.
It's out of print; there's an AI-generated audio version, should you wish to participate in the theft of authorial work.
May 30, 2016
Throughout the whole book I kept wondering if it was going to be one of those weird esoteric books you don't quite understand. It wasn't. Joan turned out to be a mirror, nothing more, nothing less. This was very interestingly constructed up to the end. But although the idea behind it was very nice, the story as a whole is too implausible for me to support it. It went too far. Too, too far.
I liked the part where the author allowed a glimpse into Joanie's inner workings and I loved the ending, which was simple and clean. But the overall story of the family... just too much. I would give it about 2.5 stars if I could.
I liked the part where the author allowed a glimpse into Joanie's inner workings and I loved the ending, which was simple and clean. But the overall story of the family... just too much. I would give it about 2.5 stars if I could.
January 13, 2010
This is one of my favourite novels. a dysfunctional family that decides that it really isn't dysfunctional at all! beautiful characters, sometimes i think that i might have known them, at some point, sometime.
September 18, 2019
Doris and Gordon Canary have two daughters, Sonja and Marcy and the story is about them and Doris and Gordon's 'third' daughter, Joan. Joan is, in reality, a child of Doris and Gordon’s eldest, unmarried, daughter Sonja, who fell pregnant when she was just 15.
The story is funny, hilarious at times even (the 'Oh, no, not again!' bit when Joan was born, for instance) but at the same time it is also a sad story.
The lyrics of the song ‘Mister Sandman’, as well as the song itself, are very cleverly woven into the story: The story has something dreamlike, as it is so unreal. (The first line of the song says ‘bring me a dream’). One has to know the lyrics of the song to fully appreciate the story in my opinion, otherwise a lot is lost on the reader. (That’s not to say one can’t appreciate the story without knowing the lyrics though, but the story is so much more if one does know the lyrics 😁 ).
The story is funny, hilarious at times even (the 'Oh, no, not again!' bit when Joan was born, for instance) but at the same time it is also a sad story.
The lyrics of the song ‘Mister Sandman’, as well as the song itself, are very cleverly woven into the story: The story has something dreamlike, as it is so unreal. (The first line of the song says ‘bring me a dream’). One has to know the lyrics of the song to fully appreciate the story in my opinion, otherwise a lot is lost on the reader. (That’s not to say one can’t appreciate the story without knowing the lyrics though, but the story is so much more if one does know the lyrics 😁 ).
March 6, 2023
A generous 3, though I was feeling a little softer towards the novel at the end. Until then I thought that the story-teller was being mean towards her characters, small cruelties and indignities constant. A weird story for sure.
August 8, 2021
This was a lot of fun.
A strange child is born under strange circumstances. Orbiting around her magnetic centre, each member of a strange family gets up to some taboo sexual shenanigans unbeknownst to the rest. Welcome to the gayest straight family ever!
A strange child is born under strange circumstances. Orbiting around her magnetic centre, each member of a strange family gets up to some taboo sexual shenanigans unbeknownst to the rest. Welcome to the gayest straight family ever!
April 21, 2009
The story is complex, so we'll start with the family: a mother, a father and their two girls, one of whom is fifteen and recently lost her virginity (albeit somewhat unwittingly; she turns to the man directly thereafter and gasps, "Did we go all the way?"). Oldest daughter becomes pregnant. Mother and daughter travel to the nursing home where an elderly aunt is staying, and the daughter gives birth in a basement room where not a year earlier, an elderly woman named Alice killed herself, etching "Rot in Hell" into the windowpane. The older women attending the birth swear that the baby, born small and white-haired, screamed "Oh no, not again!" in Alice's voice upon entry. The baby is dropped on her head by a surprised nurse.
"Mister Sandman" is more than a novel about a possibly reincarnated idiot savant, though that in itself could be a formidable plot. It is about a family which, by all appearances, should be miserable: the youngest "daughter" born out of wedlock, the boy-hungry middle child, the parents, whom are respectively in the closet. It is a rare book in that family members, despite appearances or failure to satisfy conventional household norms, support one another and, together, become a content unit, secrets or no. It is that rare book in that, at the book's end, secrets disclosed do not result in isolation, but an affirmation of acceptance by those who truly love one another.
Not to be discounted is Gowdy's lyrical writing style, which seems to reach at times but ultimately makes the story's telling, and the skill taken with the small details which compose the total, compelling picture of the novel's 1960s Toronto: one sister's secret adherence to a false bra, the moldy basement apartment of the grandmother who worships Queen Elizabeth and plucks the mushrooms growing from her damp living room carpet to fry and eat on toast "as the English do", the youngest's black-carpeted "office".
"Mister Sandman" is more than a novel about a possibly reincarnated idiot savant, though that in itself could be a formidable plot. It is about a family which, by all appearances, should be miserable: the youngest "daughter" born out of wedlock, the boy-hungry middle child, the parents, whom are respectively in the closet. It is a rare book in that family members, despite appearances or failure to satisfy conventional household norms, support one another and, together, become a content unit, secrets or no. It is that rare book in that, at the book's end, secrets disclosed do not result in isolation, but an affirmation of acceptance by those who truly love one another.
Not to be discounted is Gowdy's lyrical writing style, which seems to reach at times but ultimately makes the story's telling, and the skill taken with the small details which compose the total, compelling picture of the novel's 1960s Toronto: one sister's secret adherence to a false bra, the moldy basement apartment of the grandmother who worships Queen Elizabeth and plucks the mushrooms growing from her damp living room carpet to fry and eat on toast "as the English do", the youngest's black-carpeted "office".
March 13, 2015
What a great and unexpected delight I found this book I just picked up in a local charity shop. The main character was obviously autistic but not described as such. She was viewed by her family in the 60's as "brain-damaged" "reincarnated" and just generally as mysterious, eccentric and very much loved.
Was a very quirky novel but had some great things to say about repressing ones real natures. Give it a go!
Was a very quirky novel but had some great things to say about repressing ones real natures. Give it a go!
August 2, 2007
It's a quick and easy read. Not particularly original or demanding, but it's an amusing way to spend an afternoon. The characters are interesting and the end of the book is definitely its strongest part. I heard it compared to Geek Love, and though the daughter is a 'freak,' she is not so in the Geek Love sense. In a sense, her 'normal' family members are much stranger than she.
April 10, 2013
Second book I've read by this author. First was great. This one was tedious and "precious". Seemed like the author was trying too hard. Finished it though, but only by slogging through. Started off good, but felt forced very quickly.
August 14, 2017
I loved reading this book. The writing was excellent, the characters wonderful and unique, and I laughed out loud several times. A very fun story about a dysfunctional family in the 60's/70's.
4.5*/5!
4.5*/5!
January 12, 2022
A unique and beautiful story. I love books that change points of view. I loved every page.
June 14, 2018
The most astonishing thing about this book is the author's ability to even conceive of the character named Joan. I am fascinated without judgement, that anyone thinks this way. I found the family as she has written them; just not believable. They all, with the exception of Joan, experienced sex in ways that were believable, but could they all have these experiences, and the other family members not have a clue seems a bit of a stretch. Were they all that oblivious of each other? This story stretches over 20 years and it seems at some point one of them other than Joan would have had a clue!
Speaking of Joan - the care and raising of Joan was truly unbelievable to me. She was born in the same time frame as me - I cannot imagine that her parents would let her live in a closet or that would not all have found ways to communicate with her beyond depending on Marcie's "telepathy."
I get that 1950 was a different era for unmarried pregnant girls, but how could her parents just know nothing about who had gotten their daughter pregnant or suspected rape and done nothing! Not likely in 1950, in a large North American city.
I have read White Bone and now Mister Sandman; both are just too weird (read that believable) for my taste. I can honestly say, I am not a Gowdy fan. However, the books are well written, have depth, interesting, if not believable, characters and are well edited. The stories just aren't for me.
Speaking of Joan - the care and raising of Joan was truly unbelievable to me. She was born in the same time frame as me - I cannot imagine that her parents would let her live in a closet or that would not all have found ways to communicate with her beyond depending on Marcie's "telepathy."
I get that 1950 was a different era for unmarried pregnant girls, but how could her parents just know nothing about who had gotten their daughter pregnant or suspected rape and done nothing! Not likely in 1950, in a large North American city.
I have read White Bone and now Mister Sandman; both are just too weird (read that believable) for my taste. I can honestly say, I am not a Gowdy fan. However, the books are well written, have depth, interesting, if not believable, characters and are well edited. The stories just aren't for me.
January 12, 2019
This is an easy and a fun book to read, full of a mixture of quirky, flawed characters. Joan, the child who doesn't grow or speak but is highly intelligent and creative, links the other characters together as they each relate to her in a different way. Yet something is missing - it seems implausible that a family should consist of such different people, each dealing with their sexuality and identity in unconventional ways, and yet each oblivious of the others' actions. Marcia is the most baffling character, as not enough is revealed of her for the reader to understand her seemingly self-destructive lifestyle. Overall I enjoyed it, although I am not sure I would seek out more of Gowdy's books.
September 2, 2019
I was looking forward to this book, since I really liked 'The White Bone' and 'Little Sister'. But Mister Sandman was disappointing ('it was ok'). I still can't figure out its point. Maybe it is because it's already 20 years old - and themes around homosexuality don't seem unusual.
The book has a lot of sex in it. Page after page, Gowdy moves from one character having sex or thinking about sex, to the next character. Nothing really happens except for these trysts. There's no real plot and not real character development.
A bit of a spoiler - maybe her point is about the secrecy we keep from our loved ones - and how it keeps us apart. At the end, the secrets are revealed and there's a suggestion that it has brought them closer.
The book has a lot of sex in it. Page after page, Gowdy moves from one character having sex or thinking about sex, to the next character. Nothing really happens except for these trysts. There's no real plot and not real character development.
A bit of a spoiler - maybe her point is about the secrecy we keep from our loved ones - and how it keeps us apart. At the end, the secrets are revealed and there's a suggestion that it has brought them closer.
May 10, 2025
I thought the writing was absolutely hilarious and so fun. I laughed out loud probably more than any other book I’ve read before. As I got through the first 10 chapters though the plot seemed to stagnate a bit as it’s more of an observation of their lives rather than any really intense storyline so I found myself counting pages and getting a bit bored. The characters are hilarious and loveable in their own strange way though and the ending was pretty cute.
October 7, 2017
There was enough wit and absurdity to keep my interest and enough interesting characters to keep me reading. But I found the story itself weaker than the writing. Gowdy introduced us to a family of flawed people who all find a purpose that brings them away from the family but it is their secrets that ultimately connect them.
January 23, 2024
My favorite of Barbara Gowdy's novels that I've read -- basically the story of a family lying to each other and then learning -- or being forced -- to be honest again. All set in a hard-to-describe mix of the surreal and the mundane.
June 10, 2017
What a fantastic writer! She should be widely read. A very unusual, strange story and brilliantly told.
August 18, 2018
On the low-end of the three-star "liked it" scale. Some parts were absolutely interesting and some were totally funny but I didn't find any of it riveting.
September 3, 2018
Strange, beautiful, perfect.
August 25, 2019
There is neither rhyme nor reason in this quirky, erotic book, but it is nonetheless a page turner.
September 1, 2019
4 1/2 stars
September 15, 2019
That is one messed up family!
June 10, 2020
A novel that leaves the reader thinking about it long after putting it down. Barbara Gowdy manages to show the human side of her characters - the frailties and the compassion. A truly excellent book.
January 11, 2021
Maybe 2.5 stars? I think there are people out there who would love this story of a quirky family in 50s and 60s Toronto, but I found it just didn't keep my attention.
July 22, 2022
A very odd novel.
Excellent ending.
Excellent ending.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 95 reviews