We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

By: Karen Joy Fowler

Narrated by: Orlagh Cassidy

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

A madcap plot

I acquired a habit from my mother and grandmother of reading local authors and reading books that were prize winners or short listed. My mother always said reading local author showed support and they were easier to contact with my comments about their books. This book by Karen Joy Fowler fits both categories she is local and a prize winner. This book won the 2014 PEN/Faulkner award for fiction and was short-listed for the 2014 Man-Booker award for fiction.

The author managed to hold back the key fact or surprise of the book until the book’s second quarter, no small authorial feat. (You are not going to find out from me). The plot turns on a volatile moment in behavioral psychology, the late 1970s, when Skinner dogmatists were fighting it out with proponents of a more nuanced, evolutionary grasp of behavior. The novel’s narrator, Rosemary Cook, claims to care about none of this. Her snappy storytelling and occasional wise cracks, use of the second person engages the reader/observer directly. This is a story of every family in which loss engraves relationships.
Fowler is an excellent writer and oh, what a way she has with words. I suggest you keep a dictionary handy. One of my favorite narrators, Orlagh Cassidy narrated the book.

Enjoyable

I listened to this every night before bed. The narrator had a nice voice, and conveyed well the personality of the lead character. The story made a very uncommon situation feel relatable.

entertaining and thought provoking

loved every bit of it and will recommend it to others. narrator's reading of it was tiresome however because a sing sing constantly repeating cadance voice was used throughout that was almost as boring as a monotone.

compelling and unpredictable

It was a very enjoyable book. I liked the way the author told the story by jumping around in time and and brought the reader along by only revealing small pieces of information about characters and plot at a time. It was a story about the enduring love among siblings even when their lives are turned upside down.

Loved every minute’

Beautiful storytelling of love, loss and how our memories shape us as we grow into adults!