This riotous account of "the family unit" was a smash hit in Europe, Canada, and England. In the Times Literary Supplement, author Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale) praised Barbara Gowdy's novel as surprising and delightful, containing moments "at the same time preposterous and strangely moving." The Canary family guards many secrets, including the mystery of tiny daughter, Joan, who was dropped on her head at birth and has never spoken. Joan plays the piano like Mozart, yet has never had a lesson. The outrageous hilarity rises into a climax that creates a stunning new definition of family togetherness.


From Library Journal
The Canarys are not your typical family. Gordon and Doris are the parents of Marcy and Sonja, who at the age of 15 is pregnant with Joan. As Joan is born, she is dropped on her head, and the resulting brain damage turns her into an idiot savant. Gordon has affairs with men while Doris approaches other women. Marcy loses her virginity during her teens and then proceeds to have numerous affairs with men, usually sleeping with two or three at a time. Sonja stays at home, eating a lot and knitting, while Joan learns to read yet never speaks and avoids strangers and daylight. She serves as the group consciousness and mutely listens as each family member confides his or her various quirks and thoughts. Solidly written, this thought-provoking, challenging novel by a Canadian writer with a story collection and two previous novels to her credit is recommended for large fiction collections.?Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., OhioCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Newsday, Carol Anshaw
Gowdy is a Canadian author of note, but her work really inhabits a country of its own, a parallel place that runs on the logic of dreams, or takes its guiding principles from misheard song lyrics. And, really, why not? ... What the author gives the reader is the elegance of her writing and the great, hilarious, foible-filled humanity of her characters.


From Booklist
In her startling, original take on the state of the nuclear family, the talented Gowdy offers a surreal narrative permeated with sex, spirituality, and humor. The Canarys are no ordinary family. Doris and Gordon, both closeted homosexuals, have passed off their daughter's illegitimate child, Joan, as their own. And that is just one of the many secrets the Canary family keeps. Dropped on her head at birth, the brain-damaged Joan seems somehow unearthly, with her porcelain skin and wispy hair, her refusal to speak, and her talent for mimicry and music. Observing the family closely, Joan seems to know all--Gordon's unrequited love for the orange-haired giant who fathered her, Doris' heart-stopping affair with the vibrant Harmony La Londe. This is a bizarre and frequently moving meditation on the nature of family bonds. Most astonishing of all, who would suspect that the eccentric Canarys--standing in the front yard at midnight, dressed in their nightclothes, tossing a striped beach ball back and forth--could so perfectly encapsulate the strange dance of family life? Joanne Wilkinson


From Kirkus Reviews
Canadian novelist and storywriter Gowdy (We So Seldom Look on Love, 1993, etc.) continues to indulge her passion for (and remarkable understanding of) those existing on society's fringe- -this time in a tale of a massively dysfunctional family with enough neuroses and secrets to keep an army of therapists employed. Joan makes quite an entrance into the Canary family by remarking, ``Oh, no, not again!'' at her birth. The astonished midwife promptly drops her on her head, and as Joan develops into a ghostly, speechless child who lives in her closet, yet who can mimic even the slightest noise, it's this accident at birth that gets the blame. She may not resemble anyone in the family physically, but with her odd habits she's right at home. Grandmother Doris claims her as a daughter, since Joan's real mother Sonja is only 15; Doris is also just discovering, ecstatically, that she's gay. Grandfather Gordon, himself a closet homosexual and no stranger to affairs, had one with the handyman in his office building, a hunk who left him and is later discovered to have had a go with Sonja--and in fact is Joan's father. Then there's Marcy, the older daughter of Doris and Gordon, who believes she's telepathically linked to Joan and thus speaks in the plural whenever either of them is the subject of conversation, but who also grows up to be determinedly promiscuous. Meanwhile, Joan herself, at first contact with a piano, proves to be a musical genius; she's ideally suited to become the family confessor as well, until, after years in the role, she finds a unique way to bring everyone's secrets into the open, all but sacrificing herself to make her family whole. Absurd hilarity is mixed well here with a persistent, gentle probing of family dynamics, and crisply defined situations contribute a bell-like clarity to this affecting and unusual domestic saga as it unfolds. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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.

FROM THE CRITICS

Entertainment Weekly

One of the strangest -- and most heartwarming -- paens to family ties that you'll ever read. A+.

Elle

There is an astonishing sensibility in (this novel), which bounds, spritelike, into the farthest corners of lunacy while staying tethered to the author's very real understanding of love.

NY Times Book Review

Joan's possibly brain-damaged brilliance lies at the heart of both the narrative and the symbolism of this delightfully quirky novel, in which the Canary family's life emerges as a weird yet often affecting group composition.

Washington Post Book World

So brilliantly crafted and flat-out fun to read that she makes jubilant sinners of us all.

LA Weekly