She has a particular skill at blending other cultural influences into her work, her bestseller The Jane Austen Book Club (2004) incorporates various literary critiques of Austen’s work, for example, but also contains a love letter to science fiction legend Ursula Le Guin. The novel is narrated by Rosemary at college-age and loops backwards through her life, painting portraits of the colourful characters that make up the immediate family and attempting to understand her unusual childhood, come to terms with what happened to Fern, and attempt to understand what constitutes a “normal” life.įowler is a really talented writer who excels at creating intelligent, interesting characters who are interesting to read about whether they’re arguing about meal options or conducting cognitive behavioural tests. Not only does Rosemary lose her sister, but the collapse of the experiment sends her father into a paranoid spiral of drinking and despair, her mother becomes depressed, and her older brother leaves home and cuts all ties. This is the kind of environment which would have a lasting effect on anyone, but the real damage is done when Fern disappears. The two are constantly compared by ever-changing teams of grad students, their interactions and behavioural quirks published in scientific journals and Ph.D theses. The novel’s narrator is Rosemary, and was raised alongside an adopted sibling, Fern, by her psychologist parents as part of a long-term experiment. Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, originally published in 2013, is about family, growing-up and developmental psychology. If you would rather not have this detail spoiled for you then read this article up to the first image, then go and read the book, then come back.
Page count: 336 Before I begin: a warning about spoilers.Ī key fact about the characters in this book is revealed a quarter of the way into the novel. TITLE: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves Book cover of ‘We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves’ and book author, Karen Joy Fowler. You can let us know what you think by using #SMBookClub on Twitter and Instagram. Glyn’s latest entry is We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler.
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