Books › We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
540 pages
A witty, conversational unraveling of a deeply unconventional childhood that leaves you questioning the boundaries of family and humanity.
What it feels like
Reading this feels like sitting with a brilliant, slightly guarded friend who is finally ready to tell you the truth about her past. The narrator's voice is chatty and skips around in time, pulling you into her confidence with a wry, self-aware humor. This sharp, deceptively breezy prose makes the underlying tragedy hit with devastating force. As the layers of her unconventional childhood are peeled back, the mood shifts from quirky nostalgia to a profound, unsettling grief. It is an experience that asks uncomfortable ethical questions without ever losing its deep well of empathy. This is perfect for readers who appreciate literary fiction that pairs an unforgettable, intelligent voice with a quietly shattering emotional core.
- Mood
- nostalgic
- unsettling
- heartbreaking
- intimate
- Tone
- wry
- conversational
- reflective
- guarded
- melancholic
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- unreliability of memory · sibling bonds · ethics of science · childhood trauma · what makes us human
- The writing
- Sharp, conversational, and deceptively breezy, masking a deep undercurrent of sorrow and intellectual rigor.
- The arc
- Moves from witty, guarded detachment into a profound, devastating confrontation with childhood loss and guilt.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love character-driven literary fiction that balances sharp wit with devastating emotional and ethical questions.
Content notes
- animal cruelty
- animal testing
- childhood trauma
- family estrangement
- grief
About the book
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.
Description from Open Library.
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