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

Completely Beside Myself! Read This!

Wow. I'm completely beside myself. This book hooked me and delivered. It made me laugh, cry, and think. It taught me something new and changed my mind about some issues. It reminded me. It gave me hope.

Fern and Rosemary, are two sisters who are separated. As sister separations tend to do, this act unhinged the family, but there is hope for a brighter tomorrow. I can't say more without spoiling it for you, so just trust me on this one.

Wonderful Book but Robotically Read

If you could sum up We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves in three words, what would they be?

Brilliant and funny

Any additional comments?

I ended up reading rather than listening to this book. I don't like to write negatively about anyone--or think I don't--but the way this is read somehow keeps you from hearing the very clever humor and style.

Try to keep it all separate.

This is far too beautifully a written and read book not to experience; even if you have to hurt a little bit. You won't regret this.

Gripping and suspenseful. Cannot predict where this story will go.

Too many books follow a well recognized format. Written in first person, this story is refreshingly different in that respect one cannot predict where the characters will end up. While disturbingly sad in content at times, this reader found the story intellectually stimulating, emotionally interesting and more than worthwhile.

Wonderful book but a flat narration

This book was one of those interesting books that you need to read twice (First time not knowing the plot and story line and the second time with having the plot in mind). Very much recommend but maybe not the audiobook version since I found the narration to be a bit flat.