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We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves: A Novel, by Karen Joy Fowler
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“A gripping, bighearted book.” —Khaled Hosseini
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014
Winner of the 2014 PEN/Faulkner Award
One of the New York Times Book Review's 100 Notable Books of 2013 and named by The Christian Science Monitor as one of the top 15 works of fiction
The New York Times bestselling author of The Jane Austen Book Club introduces a middle-class American family, ordinary in every way but one.
Meet the Cooke family: Mother and Dad, brother Lowell, sister Fern, and Rosemary, who begins her story in the middle. She has her reasons. “I was raised with a chimpanzee,” she explains. “I tell you Fern was a chimp and already you aren’t thinking of her as my sister. But until Fern’s expulsion … she was my twin, my funhouse mirror, my whirlwind other half and I loved her as a sister.” As a child, Rosemary never stopped talking. Then, something happened, and Rosemary wrapped herself in silence.
In We Are All Completely beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler weaves her most accomplished work to date—a tale of loving but fallible people whose well-intentioned actions lead to heartbreaking consequences.
- Sales Rank: #11027 in Books
- Published on: 2014-02-25
- Released on: 2014-02-25
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .70" w x 5.40" l, .50 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 320 pages
From Booklist
*Starred Review* As a girl in Indiana, Rosemary, Fowler’s breathtakingly droll 22-year-old narrator, felt that she and Fern were not only sisters but also twins. So she was devastated when Fern disappeared. Then her older brother, Lowell, also vanished. Rosemary is now prolonging her college studies in California, unsure of what to make of her life. Enter tempestuous and sexy Harlow, a very dangerous friend who forces Rosemary to confront her past. We then learn that Rosemary’s father is a psychology professor, her mother a nonpracticing scientist, and Fern a chimpanzee. Fowler, author of the best-selling The Jane Austen Book Club (2004), vigorously and astutely explores the profound consequences of this unusual family configuration in sustained flashbacks. Smart and frolicsome Fern believes she is human, while Rosemary, unconsciously mirroring Fern, is instantly tagged “monkey girl” at school. Fern, Rosemary, and Lowell all end up traumatized after they are abruptly separated. As Rosemary—lonely, unmoored, and caustically funny—ponders the mutability of memories, the similarities and differences between the minds of humans and chimps, and the treatment of research animals, Fowler slowly and dramatically reveals Fern and Lowell’s heartbreaking yet instructive fates. Piquant humor, refulgent language, a canny plot rooted in real-life experiences, an irresistible narrator, threshing insights, and tender emotions—Fowler has outdone herself in this deeply inquisitive, cage-rattling novel. --Donna Seaman
Review
Praise for WE ARE ALL COMPLETELY BESIDE OURSELVES
“A novel so readably juicy and surreptitiously smart, it deserves all the attention it can get . . . [Its] fresh diction and madcap plot bend the tone toward comedy, but it never mislays its solemn raison d’être. Monkeyshines aside, this is a story of Everyfamily in which loss engraves relationships, truth is a soulful stalker and coming-of-age means facing down the mirror, recognizing the shape-shifting notion of self.”—Barbara Kingsolver, The New York Times Book Review
“Fowler’s interests here are in what sets humans apart from their fellow primates. Cognitive, language and memory skills all come into playful question. But the heart of the novel — and it has a big, warm, loudly beating heart throughout — is in its gradually pieced-together tale of family togetherness, disruption and reconciliation. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is Fowler at her best, mixing cerebral and emotional appeal together in an utterly captivating manner.”—The Seattle Times
“Rosemary’s voice is achingly memorable, and Fowler’s intelligent discourse on science vs. compassion reshapes the traditional family novel into something more universally relevant. The Cookes are unlike other families and like them at the same time, and through Rosemary’s unique perspective Fowler forces us to confront some tough truths. This brave, bold, shattering novel reminds us what it means to be human, in the best and worst sense.”—The Miami Herald
“Rosemary’s voice—vulnerable, angry, shockingly honest—is so compelling and the cast of characters, including Fern, irresistible. A fantastic novel: technically and intellectually complex, while emotionally gripping.”—Kirkus (starred review)
“Piquant humor, refulgent language, a canny plot rooted in real-life experiences, an irresistible narrator, threshing insights, and tender emotions—Fowler has outdone herself in this deeply inquisitive, cage-rattling novel.”—Booklist (starred review)
“A strong, unsettling novel . . . Fowler explores the depths of human emotions and delivers a tragic love story that captures our hearts.”—Library Journal (starred review)
“Rosemary’s experience [is] a fascinating basis for insight into memory, the mind, and human development . . . Fowler’s great accomplishment is not just that she takes the standard story of a family and makes it larger, but that the new space she’s created demands exploration.”—Publishers Weekly
"In this curious, wonderfully intelligent novel, Karen Joy Fowler brings to life a most unusual family. Wonderful Fern, wonderful Rosemary! Through them we feel what it means to be a human animal."—Andrea Barrett, author of Servants of the Map and Ship Fever
“Karen Joy Fowler has written the book she's always had in her to write. With all the quiet strangeness of her amazing Sarah Canary, and all the breezy wit and skill of her beloved Jane Austen Book Club, and a new, urgent gravity, she has told the story of an American family. An unusual family—but aren't all families unusual? A very American, an only-in-America family—and yet an everywhere family, whose children, parents, siblings, love one another very much, and damage one another badly. Does the love survive the damage? Will human beings survive the damage they do to the world they love so much? This is a strong, deep, sweet novel.”—Ursula K. Le Guin, author of Lavinia, The Unreal and the Real, and the Earthsea Cycle
“We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is a dark cautionary tale hanging out, incognito-style, in what at first seems a traditional family narrative. It is anything but. This novel is deliciously jaunty in tone and disturbing in material. Karen Joy Fowler tells the story of how one animal—the animal of man—can simultaneously destroy and expand our notion of what is possible.”—Alice Sebold, New York Times-bestselling author of The Lovely Bones and The Almost Moon
“You know how people say something is incredible or unbelievable when they mean it's excellent? Well, Karen Joy Fowler's new book is excellent: utterly believable and completely credible - a funny, moving, entertaining novel that is also an important and unblinking review of a shameful chapter in the history of science.”—Dr. Mary Doria Russell, biological anthropologist and author of The Sparrow and Doc
“It’s been years since I’ve felt so passionate about a book. When I finished at 3 a.m., I wept, then I woke up the next morning, reread the ending, and cried all over again.” —Ruth Ozeki, author of My Year of Meats and A Tale for the Time Being
"This unforgettable novel is a dark and beautiful journey into the heart of a family, an exploration of the meanings of memory, a study of what it means to be 'human.' In the end the book doesn't just break your heart; it takes your heart and won't give it back."—Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply and Stay Awake
“It really is impossible to do justice here in a blurb. This is a funny, stingingly smart, and heartbreaking book. Among other things, it's about love, family, loss, and secrets; the acquisition and the loss of language. It's also about two sisters, Rosemary and Fern, who are unlike any other sisters you've ever met before.”—Kelly Link, author of Stranger Things Happen and Pretty Monsters
About the Author
Karen Joy Fowler is the award-winning author of five previous novels and four story collections, including the forthcoming Black Glass. She lives in Santa Cruz, California.
Most helpful customer reviews
135 of 141 people found the following review helpful.
Anything but ordinary
By A. Parker
"We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves" is one of the most unusual, engaging and genuinely moving novels that has come around in a long, long time. Think "Shipping News" meets "Poisonwood Bible," and shaded with Karen Joy Fowler's unique voice and talent, and you have an idea of the literate and storytelling power of this book.
There's an inherent dilemma in talking about Fowler's new novel: it's built around a secret. Or, more accurately, a reveal. And though knowing the twist in advance doesn't diminish the story, it won't be disclosed here: no spoiler alert.
On the surface, the novel is about the Cookes of Bloomington, Indiana (where Fowler spent the first 11 years of her life). This unconventional, dysfunctional family consists of a pedantic psychologist father who specializes in animal behavior, an emotionally fragile mother and three children: Lowell, Rosemary and Fern.
One daughter mysteriously vanishes, the other changes from a prodigiously talkative child to a silent adult; the brother runs away. And beneath the basic plotline lies a story as fantastic, terrible and beautiful as any Grimm's fairy tale.
Reading Fowler's novel is like looking at a photo album as someone else turns the pages, back and forth and often several at a time. The all-too-human Cooke family comes into focus through this fluid, time-tripping technique, unearthing memories and mysteries along the way. Jealousy glitters as a recurring theme, along with fairness, unconditional love, animal rights and the power of language.
Rosemary, the relentlessly direct voice of the novel, explains up front that she's starting her story in the middle: it's 1996, and she's a 22-year-old student at the University of California, Davis. Her brother, who disappeared 11 years earlier, is an animal rights activist on the run from the FBI. She hasn't seen her sister Fern in 17 years.
We time-shift backwards, witnessing the three siblings' exceptional connection prior to the unraveling of their childhood, then skip decades ahead to solve the sad puzzle of Fern's disappearance. Throughout the book, Fowler's brilliant wordcraft intertwines tragedy and levity in a masterful crazy quilt of innocence, loss, renewal and bittersweet hope.
60 of 64 people found the following review helpful.
IN MOST FAMILIES, THERE IS A FAVORITE CHILD
By Pamela A. Poddany
WE ARE ALL COMPLETELY BESIDE OURSELVES
For me, this book started out gang busters. Good writing, excellent plot, strong characters, a little mystique to add much thought and pondering to the story. Then, for me, the book started to slow, rolling to an almost stand still, yet my longing and desire was still there to enjoy.
Karen Joy Fowler is a fantastic writer. She can take a simple subject -- such as the beginning of a new weather season -- and turn the description into a thing of beauty. Her ideas are pure and unique. Her wit is razor sharp and she writes with enjoyment and merriment. However -- for me -- this book just didn't take off. An example of Fowler's awesome writing ability -- "Autumn came suddenly that year, like a door opening. One morning I was bicycling to class when a large flock of Canada geese passed overhead. I couldn't see them, or much of anything else, but I heard the jazzy honking above me. There was a tule fog off the fields and I was wrapped inside it, pedaling through clouds." Such talent, such a way with words.
We meet the Cooke family, consisting of mom and dad, brother Lowell, and sisters Rosemary and Fern. Something tragic has happened to the Cooke clan and Rosemary sets out to tell us the entire story. However she starts in the middle of their history and moves backwards to the beginning. This reader did not find it confusing, it was a different and wonderful way to tell the tale.
Something so drastic has happened that the Cooke clan has literally dissolved and is pretty much destroyed. Rosemary has memories of her childhood and also has many blanks of her childhood. Her brother is a wanted man and her sister has disappeared off the face of the earth. Rosemary tries to fill in the blanks, tries to remember her past, wondering about Fern and what really happened to her when they were little girls. What happened to Fern? Did Rosemary play a part in Fern's going missing? Why can't the entire Cooke family get over this event and move on with their lives? These are but a few of the questions constantly rolling through Rosemary's savaged emotional being.
And in her search for the truth, Rosemary calls up the past and tries to find answers to help her get through the remainder of her life and bring some peace to herself.
This book is full of emotions and at times the writing turned preachy and somewhat boring regarding certain subjects. At times I felt as if I was reading a text book and not a novel. Like stated, I tried to like this book, but it just wasn't one for me. From looking at the ratings, I am certainly in the minority here. Take a chance and read this book. Perhaps you will enjoy it more than I did.
Thanks.
Pam
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Not your ordinary family
By Kindle Customer
I do believe that more than anything, the author wanted to jolt you with her mid-book reveal. And because of that you shouldn't be reading all these reviews and you shouldn't even look at the dust cover if you're intending to read "We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves" in the manner the author intended, or more aptly stated, hoped.
But the reality of things is that the book has gotten so much attention, the story enough hype, that the surprise is no longer a mystery. Rosemary reveals the nut of the novel when she says, "I spent the first eighteen years of my life defined by this one fact: that I was raised with a chimpanzee" And then adds, "I'd scarcely known a moment alone. She was my twin, my funhouse mirror, my whirlwind other half, and I loved her as a sister."
This is a book about the relationship between Rosemary and Fern, her "sister," but more so, it is an examination of what it means to be a family. And in addition to Rosemary and Fern, the Cooke family makes up a sideshow of characters that includes dad, mom and brother Lowell. There's a lot of family wackiness (read humor) caring and tenderness, to drive Fowler's story. But what you remember is the heartbreak and longing that is what really defines the relationship members of this family have with each other.
Fern was removed from the family when both she and Rosemary were six. And there's the pivot of the story. Rosemary, in her circumspect way, goes on with her life as a child and then an adult and that's the arc of the story. Enrolled at the University of California - Davis, Rosemary hitches up with another crazy cast of characters, roomies who sit around together to play "whose family is the weirdest," a game that as it turns out even Rosemary has a tough time winning.
Fowler's way with words, her phrasing and her ability to handle dialogue to make talk sound like singing are what make this book feel fresh; I felt as if I was reading an author with a new voice. And that's refreshing, and makes the book such a rewarding read.
In a word: Piquant
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