Plot Summary:The Canaries of the title is an allusion to the protagonists, caged by marriage. There are two unhappy, incompatible couples, one is a simple-living playwright and his sophisticated, bohemian wife, the other, a stuffy Eton and Oxford type whose spouse is a bored but fun-loving onetime tiller girl. They all spend a week-end holiday at the playwright's cottage, where he falls in love with the jolly chorine, and his friend falls for the playwright's highbrow wife.