We are all completely beside ourselves

Hardcover, 310 pages

Published Dec. 3, 2013 by G.P. Putnam's Sons.

ISBN:
978-0-399-16209-1
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
822532814

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4 stars (38 reviews)

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 is a chimp and, already, you aren't thinking of her as my sister. . . . Until Fern's expulsion . . . she was my twin, my fun-house mirror, my whirlwind other half. . . . 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.

14 editions

Thought-provoking

4 stars

Content warning Vague allusion to a significant plot point

We are all completely beside ourselves

4 stars

We are all completely beside ourselves tells the story of a peculiar family and their troubles seen through the eyes of the little sister Rosemary, telling us about her family, her brother that went away and her sister that suddenly disappeared, breaking the family in pieces.

Through her eyes and memories we go around time in a messy way, just like we remember ourselves. Bit by bit we uncover an unique family and every chapter brings another surprise. While at first the family looks quite dysfunctional, you begin to realise that the way they act and behave might be quite understandable.

I loved reading this book, every single person in it is quite unique in its own way and lovable.

A Grounded, Complex Look at Intersecting Worlds

5 stars

This was the first book I picked up this year. I think about it all the time, and it's one that I expect I shall revisit. There's a lot going on here: individual and familial conflict and splintering in loss; some of the potential effects of choosing an active, militant, radical, underground life; the close, easy bonds between people and the "natural" world we inhabit, and the ways that these are distorted and ruptured by contemporary social structures; and on.

I think that any radical—especially those interested in animal liberation—should pick this up, at the very least for the lens it offers. But I also think that those who aren't radical will find insights here to hold on to—and may come to understand some pieces of what move the rest of us.

Review of 'We are all completely beside ourselves' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This review originally appeared at Full of Words.

Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is a family saga with a twist. Unfortunately, the marketing and summaries of the book don’t try very hard to hide that twist, so if you somehow manage to read the book without knowing it, I am very impressed.

The good news is that I knew the twist and it didn’t ruin the book for me, but I do wish I could have experienced it completely fresh. The bad news is that the fact I even mentioned that there was a twist is probably telling you more than you should know.

Fowler is an interesting author. Her early works and short stories are best described as “slipstream” or “magical realism”, but she’s most well-known for The Jane Austen Book Club, a bestseller later adapted into a movie. Nothing fantastical happens in that …

Review of 'We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Nope. It didn't do it for me. I found it dull, boring, and it kept on going and going. Also the many extra information about authors, about chimps, about psychologist stuff... Really, I didn't care. I'm glad I finished it, but I will never be reading this one again. It isn't worth the hype, in my opinion

Review of 'We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

What is normal anymore? I was impressed with Rosemary and the thoughts that run through her head, the way she sees her family, the way she sees herself and how she compares that to other families and other people.

She seems to have been very close to her sister but that was so long ago she does not quite seem to trust memory for factual events - and getting deeper, is anything real or is it all just different perspectives stored away into brain cells that are real only to the user of those brain cells?

Her family seems relatively normal until the big reveal a third of the way into the book. The last third of the book deals heavily with animal cruelty specifically in the area of scientific research and testing.

The shift from family narrative to a very real animal protection issue is reasonably subtle but the …

Review of 'We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

It’s a hard book for me to review. I want to talk about so many things that could reveal the surprise. It was a book group pick and I picked it up knowing absolutely nothing other than its presence amongst book awards last year. I don’t think I would have read it based on the descriptions generally given. It sounds like a story about a broken family, but it has something so much more special at the heart of it.

The fact that details about Fern aren’t revealed until page 77, means you don’t start with preconceptions about her. Rosemary introduces her in the way she wants you to think about her. I still think it’s worth reading if someone has told you about Fern, but it is certainly written with the intent that you don’t know until she chooses to tell you.

The story unfolds in a non-linear narrative. …

Review of 'We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

First and foremost, I must advise this review will contain a slight spoiler about Rosemary’s sister Fern. I did try to write this review spoiler free but it proved impossible to talk about what made this book interesting without mentioning Fern. I am not sure if this is a real spoiler, as some covers and synopsis I have read give away that Fern is in fact a chimpanzee.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves begins in the middle of the story; Rosemary is in college, her brother Lowell is a fugitive, wanted by the FBI for domestic terrorism and her sister Fern has disappeared. As the novel progresses in a non-linear format, the puzzle starts to make a lot more sense. Karen Joy Fowler’s novel takes the tragic story of a dysfunctional family and makes it a little more complicated.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Karen Joy Fowler, …

Review of 'We are all completely beside ourselves' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

The fallibility and inherent untrustworthiness of memory isn't a particularly original subject, but the author handles it in an interesting and original way in this novel. One thing I wanted to share is that I didn't read this book for a long time after it was recommended to me because I believed I already knew a key plot point that I thought was an important "reveal" -- it isn't. So if you are already aware of the central conceit of the story, don't let that stop you from reading it.

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