We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Really liked it! A couple lines will really stick with me (I think. It's been about 24 hours so far.

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.

Just not much happens in the whole book and the characters are only ever partially developed.

This was a solid book in terms of story. The characters were relatable and the information was really interesting. I enjoyed all of the psychology tidbits. However, I found the narrator's way of speaking directly to the reader distracting and annoying, and the timeline jumping made me less engaged.

One sentence synopsis... A thoughtful portrait of the fallout a family experience after a child/chimpanzee study they're participants in is prematurely aborted. .

Read it if you liked... ‘Okja', man-of-the-moment Bong Joon-Ho's film about animal cruelty ft. the Animal Liberation Front. .

Dream casting... Four years ago this was supposed to be a miniseries starring Natalie Portman... nothing seems to have come from that but she'd be a great Rosemary Cooke. Obviously having an actual chimpanzee in the film would be a slap in the face to the subject matter of the book so maybe they're just waiting for the CGI technology to catch up.

Wat een mooi boek. Over familie, vriendschap, herinneringen, schuld. Echt heel goed. En misschien wel de mooiste titel ooit.

A fantastic gem of a book. Rosemary Cooke is the narrator, telling the story of how she had a sister, Fern, when she was small, and then Fern disappeared and her family was turned upside down. The book deals with human and animal cognition and mental development, the ethics of animal experimentation, memory and family life, AND Rosemary Cooke is a delightful character. She feels herself to be an outsider to “normal” groups of people—girls she meets at college, for example. Her sense of herself as an outsider gives her a bit of an acerbic view of human relations, including her own relationships with other people. The result is often hilarious commentary on human behavior.

I really loved this book. I'll be looking up Karen Joy Fowler's other books to put on my reading list.

A very strange but entertaining tale about a dysfunctional and extraordinary family. I was left with the sense that there was more to say about this group of people and I wasn't quite sure what Karen Joy Fowler's end game might be. Beautifully written and worth the read, but I find myself still a bit puzzled by the point of it all.

This book absolutely blew my mind. I loved everything about it and it was the topic of many interesting discussions with people during and after reading it! After reading it I feel that the synopsis doesn't really give any indication of the way the story is going to go or what type of book it is. I loved the way it was written and the perspective that it used. It was an emotional rollercoaster and I loved every minute of it. I could see this being a film one day.....

More like a 3.5... Almost there, but not quite. Books like this one keeps you in a solid quiet place. Like a road trip that you sleep halfway and waking up still not where you intended to be before half sleeping. It was a good read, enough to keep me wake at night in time to feed my son and think about it the next day wondering what happens next.

The twist for me what at the early pages and I wanted to have more from it. It wasn't enough, I needed more but maybe it was only just that.

So the first major thing to say is that both the blurb on the back of the book and the cover illustration of this edition spoiled the major plot twist, so I spent the first 70 pages wondering how I was supposed to react, and how I would have reacted had I not known that Fern was a chimp, not a girl. Once that was over, though, I found the book to be a solid family drama with relatable main characters. It's hard to more thoroughly review without massive spoilers, and I tend to think that spoiler-y reviews are not helpful, so suffice to say that I found Rosemary, Harlow and Lowell particularly to be fascinating, unique characters and I found Rosemary's journey from loquacious youngest sibling to recalcitrant only child to be interesting.

Two major downsides: one is that the animal rights stuff got a little heavy-handed to the point of detracting from the main plot. (A major side plot seemed to be: “You, too, can join the ALF. Here is how. Don't feel bad, they're not really terrorists – they don't hurt people, they just set back life-saving research by years, but that doesn't really count.”) The other downside is that the last 20% of the book feels really weak. It mostly is just tying up loose ends and has completely lost the momentum of the first portion.

Overall, I found this book compulsive reading. I had to know what happened to Fern and Lowell, and then what Rosemary was going to do. The characters were done beautifully and Fowler succeeded at something that so much contemporary literature fails at: an actually unique story.

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com.

This book is fantastic however it is best going in knowing as little as possible. If you actually plan on buying this book, don't read my review.

I've read a number of Man Booker nominated books over the past year and the thing I've found is that most of them are boring and try too hard at being some amazing work of literary fiction. I went into We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves thinking it would be another boring Man Booker nominated book, I was so wrong.

I actually went into this thinking it was science-fiction (not sure where I read that), it is not though science and biology play an important role. This book makes a very good argument for why wild animals should not be kept as pets.The basic plot of this is a girl (Rosemary), who is now in college, tries to work out why her sister disappeared at the age of five. I love that you don't find out that Rosemary's sister is in fact a chimpanzee till nearly a third of the way through the book. Karen Joy Fowler spends most of the first 70 pages making Fern feel like a real person so when the twist comes and you find out Fern is in fact a chimpanzee its a huge shock.I am a self-confessed animal lover. I have spent years watching TV shows like Monkey Life and Monkey Business. I know that chimpanzees don't make good pets and I know the reasons why. The thing I loved about this book is that it was not a book about a chimp living with a family. This was very much Rosemary's story about how she had to adapt to living without her sister.This was a fantastic look at why wild animals should not be kept as pets and had some extremely important things to say about the inhumane way that animals are used to test products for humans. This book is a must read but also a warning, it might make you change what make-up products you purchase, it might change how you view zoos, it might even make you become a vegetarian.

Very charming!

A character piece about Rosemary Cooke, a lady born in the 70s, colleged in the 90s, and narrating her story in 2012. There is a BIG SPOILER in the first half of the book. Okay, I thought there was a BIG SPOILER, but it is more like a medium-size spoiler. But I daren't spoil it.

So I can't really describe the story. Suffice to say, it's about Rosemary and her family and her upbringing. And they are very interesting people. UC-Davis and Indiana are described in rich, loving detail. The 90s are described in rich, loving detail. Very heartwarming, for those who nostalgize that period. There is also a very important philosophical thread which was very affecting, but which I daren't describe (again).

The voice was great.

I should also mention that I find it very difficult to read non-genre fiction, but I was charmed by this. So that should be saying something! Hmm, only criticism: a bit overlong, given that it's essentially a character piece with an awesome moral point.

I literally can't tell you anything about this book without spoiling it, but it was excellent and you should read it.

Recommend

I was fairly confident that I was not going to like We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. In the opening pages, the conversational tone and the author's obvious withholding of information gave the novel a fluffy first impression. It is evident that it is all a ploy, but to what aim? Why is the author trying to lead her readers on? And would she be able to pull it off in a way that was satisfactory? I figured the answer to these questions would result in my dislike for the novel.

The truth is the tactic never worked for me. I'm not sure if the novel would've been better had the author been forthright or used a different tone, but it didn't matter, because in the end, I liked it regardless. And despite my fluff detector going off incessantly, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves was far from fluffy; it is an incredibly intelligent and insightful novel. Several times it got me thinking about our relationships with others and with animals. The subject is well thought out and the research is abundantly clear. Overall, an enjoyable and quick read that may rely a bit too heavily on tricks.

Oh, and a word to the publishers: If the intent of a book is to expose a big “revelation”, you may wish to not include that revelation on the front cover. Duh.

The author chose to have the protagonist tell her story not from the beginning but from the middle, this is very tricky device to use when telling a story, but highly effective for the telling of Rosemary's story. Infused with heartbreak and a bit of humor, Rosemary lets us in on how her family has chosen to live their lives and how those choices have affected each and every one of them in present day. The core of the story is about family ties, her place within the family, and how the way she is perceived throughout her life has affected her place in the world. What's right for some may not be right for others, and sometimes the best of intentions can still have bitter consequences. This story definitely leaves you asking how you perceive yourself, how others perceive you, and what in your life is important and worth taking a stand for.

The writing style is really disjointed, jumping through time a lot. I love the story. It seems like it could get preachy but doesn't quite.

Thoroughly enjoyable–I even laughed out loud at times. I think the story might have packed a bit more punch, though, if I hadn't known going into that Fern was a chimp. Still, a very fun read, especially for a story that is ultimately about loss and facing hard personal truths. I will look for more from this author.

I probably would have enjoyed this a lot more if it hadn't been the audio version. Personally I didn't get on with the voice at all. A dreary monotone most of the time.

Sobbed at the end. I never do that anymore. This one got into my system and is going to stick for awhile. I should probably review it but I need time to think about it first.

Beautiful tragedy about family, sisters, psychology, science, ethics & animals. Everyone should read it but be warned a lot of loss & pain are experienced by the human and chimp characters. It's not an easy read.

AUGH I read a bunch of reviews of this that were just like, “SO GOOD, READ IT ASAP BUT AVOID SPOILERS” but FYI the GoodReads summary of this is a spoiler. Also the ~spoiler~ is like... what makes this an interesting concept.

Anyway, I read it spoiled, but I kind of appreciated it that way–like knowing how a magic trick works, I appreciated seeing how Fowler was building to the ~spoiler~.

Either way you read it–I loved the characters and the, hmm, humaneness of the narrative? I guess is what I want to say?