We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

I loved everything about this novel: the elements of surprise, the family dynamics, the character development, and the more significant issues—trauma, childhood, envy, animal cruelty, and activism.

In the first page, we learn that the narrator lost both her brother and her sister, so we suppose the novel will be about this double tragedy. It was admirable that the narrator didn’t tell us for so long that her sister was a chimp. I probably wouldn’t have cared as much if I had known earlier, as I never had a pet and never gave much thought to animals. By tricking me,… show more.

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." So goes the great Anna Karenina quote by Tolstoy, and what lies at the center of the Cooke family unhappiness is as singular and surprising as it gets.

Narrator Rosemary Cooke reveals her extraordinary family secret in flashbacks interwoven with the present-day narrative. What elevated this book for me was the deep dive into the emotional life of Rosemary and her brother Lowell as they discover and then navigate the secret that destroyed their family.

The secret - which is the premise for this novel -… show more.

Okay, this is a little bit of a cheat, as there’s no magical realism exactly in Karen Joy Fowler’s novel, but there’s certainly the uncanny. This story of two sisters separated during childhood trying to find each other in adulthood is wry and funny, but also immensely heartfelt and dramatic, and the twist at the halfway mark (which I won’t spoil for you!) makes this one a personal favourite. 

One of the absolute joys of writing (and super annoying quirk to non-writer friends) is being able to see the writing or the narrative arc when you’re watching TV or a movie or reading a book. Everything eventually becomes a study of craft. 

But every once in a while, an author sets an arc that was (a) completely plausible and (b) that I didn’t see coming, and that’s magic. 

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves did exactly that. I highly recommend not even reading the description, just start reading.

There’s something odd about Rosemary, and about her brother and sister, who she’s no longer in touch with. What exactly went on in this profoundly disturbed family is gradually revealed. There are deep, dark, and important themes here, wrapped up in a funny and engaging story. I’m saying no more, because the less you know the better!

I wouldn’t dare spoil what makes the sisters in We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves so special. You have to come upon it in the course of reading this absolutely perfect novel. But in the deepest, best, hardest, most unusual way, this is a novel about sisters – sisters in childhood, sisters as they grow, sisters as they become very different sorts of adults and make their way in the world together and apart.