We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

[gilda_elise]

Meet the Cooke family. Our narrator is Rosemary Cooke. As a child, she never stopped talking; now that she's started college, she has wrapped herself in silence: the silence of intentional forgetting, of protective cover. Rosemary is now an only child, but she used to have a sister the same age as her, and an older brother. Both are now gone—vanished from her life. Her once lively mother is a shell of her former self, her clever and imperious father now a distant, brooding man. And there was something unique about Rosemary's sister, Fern.
You'll have to find out for yourself what it is that makes her unhappy family unlike any other.

What a wonderful idea for a story! I’d heard of the experiment, years ago, but putting it into novel form really brought home the unforeseen consequences of such an experiment, though some should have been seen from the start.

Funny, sad, light, deep, the book is everything someone should want in a story. I loved following Rosemary’s journal through self discovery. What happens to us as children stays with us for a lifetime; that premise is shown in all its complexity here. It’s a short novel, and slow to start, but it’s a captivating story.






Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.

1. The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry
2. Polaris (Alex Benedict #2) by Jack McDevitt
3. How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
4. Mikhail Baryshnikov's Stories From My Childhood: Beloved Fairy Tales from the Queen to Cinderella by Mikhail Baryshnikov
5. The Fateful Lightning (Civil War: 1861-1865, Western Theater #4) by Jeff Shaara
6. Circling the Sun by Paula McLain
7. The Petticoat Men by Barbara Ewing
8. Lily Pond: Four Years with a Family of Beavers by Hope Ryden
9. Running with the Demon (The Word & The Void #1) by Terry Brooks
10. The Gentle Giants of Ganymede (Giants #2) by James P. Hogan
11. Ararat (Ben Walker #1) by Christopher Golden
12. If It Bleeds by Stephen King
13. American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant by Ronald C. White Jr.
14. The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
15. Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell Adventurer, Adviser to Kings by Janet Wallach
16. Snowblind by Christopher Golden
17. Women of Ashdon (Bridges Over Time #3) by Valerie Anand
18. Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory by Claudio Saunt
19. The Family Plot by Cherie Priest
20. The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa (translated by Nick Caistor)
21. Roses are White by Lesley Lambert
22. Giants' Star (Giants #3) by James P. Hogan
23. Duma Key by Stephen King
24. Magic In My Shoes by Constance Savery
25. The Breach by M.T. Hill



26. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler










Two Books = Titles Combined to Make --->

Comments

[shooting2kill.livejournal.com]

You're a brave soul as I tend to avoid books which might depress or take me back to family life! Glad you enjoyed it, though.

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

The book wasn't what I would call depressing, though there were sad events that took place. My own family life, though there were some bumps, was basically happy, so maybe that's why these sort of books don't bother me. I can focus more on the contentment that their resolutions brought.

[shooting2kill.livejournal.com]

I probably shouldn't have used the word 'depressed' as that's a bit strong, it's more a case of sadness because there's no one left to answer questions any more!

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

I think that happens in most families. Right now my mother is the only one still alive from her generation, so there's no way to find out a lot of things that we probably should have asked about before. It is frustrating.