We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves: A Novel
Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award
Finalist for the Man Booker Prize
A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of the Century
The New York Times bestselling author of The Jane Austen Book Club introduces a middle-class American family that is ordinary in every way but one in this award-winning novel.
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.
“A gripping, big-hearted book...through the tender voice of her protagonist, Fowler has a lot to say about family, memory, language, science, and indeed the question of what constitutes a human being.”—Khaled Hosseini
Finalist for the Man Booker Prize
A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of the Century
The New York Times bestselling author of The Jane Austen Book Club introduces a middle-class American family that is ordinary in every way but one in this award-winning novel.
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.
“A gripping, big-hearted book...through the tender voice of her protagonist, Fowler has a lot to say about family, memory, language, science, and indeed the question of what constitutes a human being.”—Khaled Hosseini
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Community Reviews
thenextgoodbook.com
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
308 pages
What’s it about?
This book centers around the Cooke family from Bloomington, Indiana. Rosemary Cooke narrates the story of her family- but be forewarned that Rosemary starts in the middle of the story. I was expecting a family drama, but this novel is much different than what I expected.
What did it make me think about?
So as I mentioned this book was totally unexpected. I did not read the back cover of the book before I started so I went into the book blind. Maybe that was a good thing. This book was about childhood, memory, psychology, research, and animal activism. This book has a point of view.
Should I read it?
I thought this was an interesting book. If you read to see issues from a new perspective then you will be open to this book. I was informed, educated, and made to feel by Fowler's story. At times the message was heavy handed and that might bother some readers. This is a book that will resonate will all animal lovers out there.
Quote-
“ It seemed to Lowell that psychological studies of nonhuman animals were mostly cumbersome, convoluted, and downright peculiar. They taught us little about the animals but lots about the researchers who designed and ran them.”
If you liked this try-
Rabbit Cake by Annie Hartnett
Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan
The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
308 pages
What’s it about?
This book centers around the Cooke family from Bloomington, Indiana. Rosemary Cooke narrates the story of her family- but be forewarned that Rosemary starts in the middle of the story. I was expecting a family drama, but this novel is much different than what I expected.
What did it make me think about?
So as I mentioned this book was totally unexpected. I did not read the back cover of the book before I started so I went into the book blind. Maybe that was a good thing. This book was about childhood, memory, psychology, research, and animal activism. This book has a point of view.
Should I read it?
I thought this was an interesting book. If you read to see issues from a new perspective then you will be open to this book. I was informed, educated, and made to feel by Fowler's story. At times the message was heavy handed and that might bother some readers. This is a book that will resonate will all animal lovers out there.
Quote-
“ It seemed to Lowell that psychological studies of nonhuman animals were mostly cumbersome, convoluted, and downright peculiar. They taught us little about the animals but lots about the researchers who designed and ran them.”
If you liked this try-
Rabbit Cake by Annie Hartnett
Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan
The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer
This is a truly amazing story, well crafted and exhaustively researched. I don't remember why I bought this book to begin with, but I'm glad I knew nothing about it when I started reading because I didn't see it coming...
That said, there are so many sad, horrific scenes in this book that were just way too upsetting for me. As an animal lover, I can't bear to read some of the terrible things that humans do to animals.
Rosemary Cooke grew up in a dysfunctional family, but not your normal dysfunctional family. Her father was a smart, gifted scientist, which of course created all kinds of psychological issues for Rosemary, and her siblings. We come in in the middle of the story. (When Rosemary was young, she talked too much so her parents would always tell her to start in the middle.) Rosemary is in college, and is reflecting on her past, and the fates of her estranged brother and sister -- feelings she's repressed for years. We slowly come to learn what happened long ago, through reawakened memories, her mother's journal entries, and more, that made their seemingly happy home come crashing down and causing tragic circumstances for one and sparking the disappearance of another.
That said, there are so many sad, horrific scenes in this book that were just way too upsetting for me. As an animal lover, I can't bear to read some of the terrible things that humans do to animals.
Rosemary Cooke grew up in a dysfunctional family, but not your normal dysfunctional family. Her father was a smart, gifted scientist, which of course created all kinds of psychological issues for Rosemary, and her siblings. We come in in the middle of the story. (When Rosemary was young, she talked too much so her parents would always tell her to start in the middle.) Rosemary is in college, and is reflecting on her past, and the fates of her estranged brother and sister -- feelings she's repressed for years. We slowly come to learn what happened long ago, through reawakened memories, her mother's journal entries, and more, that made their seemingly happy home come crashing down and causing tragic circumstances for one and sparking the disappearance of another.
I'm not quite sure it deserves 4 stars, but it's certainly better than 3. It seems like a well researched book, almost like a memoir. I think it would be a good book for a Book Club, it would lead to interesting discussions about family dynamics,, siblings, pets.... Wish i could say more without giving it away...
I’d read enough reviews of this book to know the basic plot line. Honestly, there is no easy, “spoiler free” way to discuss it! The story was engaging and Rose, Fern & Harlow were beautifully developed characters. At its heart, this book is about the fragility and selectiveness of memory. The same events filtered through the lens of different characters adds a richness to the story.
At times, the narrative was a bit “lectury”, as if the author didn’t have confidence in the conclusions readers might draw on there own about the novel’s more political plot line. It was a little to on-the-nose, “this is what you need to believe” for me and it felt unnecessary.
The end left me thinking and vested in the future of the main characters. All in, a very enjoyable read.
At times, the narrative was a bit “lectury”, as if the author didn’t have confidence in the conclusions readers might draw on there own about the novel’s more political plot line. It was a little to on-the-nose, “this is what you need to believe” for me and it felt unnecessary.
The end left me thinking and vested in the future of the main characters. All in, a very enjoyable read.
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