We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (Pen/Faulkner Award - Fiction) (original: 2013; edição: 2013)

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 book or in her newest novel, but as I read them, my awareness of her history as a fantasist was always at the back of my mind.

Even when Fowler’s books are technically realistic, they seem to hover on the edge of the strange. Reality is thin wherever she turns her gaze, even if it’s only upon an overly personal discussion of the complete Austen. That sense of oddness is probably why I’m drawn to her books, regardless of the subject.

Rosemary, the narrator of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, is weird and broken and compelling in a million different ways. She barrels through life, trying to run from her past and her family, but never quite escapes from her many failures and disappointments. She’s an unreliable narrator disappointed by her inability to pin down the truth.

The problem is that she can’t actually remember what happened between her and her sister when they were young, but she knows that it broke her family apart, and isn’t that almost the same thing? Over the course of the novel, Rosemary unpacks her past, dancing towards truth and only veering away when she realizes that her own biases and imaginings have become more authoritative than factual.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is quietly devastating, but it’s also funny and strange and next door to the unreal. Reading it made me misty-eyed more than once, and I always consider that a point in favor of a book. I absolutely loved it.

Full disclosure: Although I received a free review copy of this book from Net Galley, I actually listened to the audiobook. ( )

Huh. Well, that wasn't what I was expecting.

I'm not really sure what I was expecting, or what I got. Anyway, it's a well-written, entertaining, readable and thought-provoking novel about a young woman whose background is unusual and does much to shape who she is and how she behaves. (I know that's sort of what everyone's background does, but it's probably moreso in her case.)

4* because I enjoyed it and would recommend it. Not 5* only because I'm mean about my 5* ratings and you have to make me really fall in love to get one. ( )

Prepare to weep. This book was incandescent and perfectly put together. The insertion of words and memory research was exquisite. The ending was so well done. It truly could not have been any better. ( )

osemary Cooke is at college in California. She has no real friends to speak of. Her house mate Ted, maybe, but she isn’t sure. Then she encounters Harlow, a drama student who excels at drama. As in, over the top drama of day to day living. When they first meet both end up getting arrested.

But this isn’t the story of their friendship, or maybe that is to strong a word for their relationship. What this is story is all about is Rosemary herself, her family, her memories and her experiences as a child. It is about what it is to be human. And whether or not humanity is all there is.

Plotwise there is an important revelation less than 100 pages in, concerning Rosemary’s twin sister Fern. Which obviously I’m going to just blab here (spoilers are hidden on my blog review : http://www.susanhatedliterature.net/2015/05/we-are-all-completely-beside-outselv... )

It is a terribly sad book. But it isn’t a depressing one. It’s quite funny in places, Rosemary is a great narrator. An unreliable one, but she’ll tell you that herself. Because this book is also all about memory and how we rewrite our pasts even without knowing. A scene you remember with utter clarity might never have happened. And what does that mean? After all, our past defines us in many ways. The experiences we lived through, the lessons we learned, and if they didn’t happen the way we remember are we really who we think we are?

This was my first book by Fowler, I really enjoyed it and think I’ll read more by her. I would have like to learn more about Fern, but as Rosemary says, she can’t tell Fern’s side of the story because she wasn’t there for a lot of it, just like she can’t tell what happened to Lowell when he was absent. She can only tell you her story. It s a great read.

I read this one immediately after Stephen King's "Revival" and almost gave it four stars in comparison -- Fowler's novel is an entirely different and realistic type of modern horror. ( )