we are all completely beside ourselves book review

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is a story about memory and a family torn apart by a tragedy they can’t give voice to.

As Harlow swings her way into Rosemary’s life, Rosemary is forced to revisit her past and the part she played in her sister’s disappearance and her brother’s silence. This, the first of several cases of wrongful imprisonment that arise again and again throughout the novel, brings Rosemary in touch with drama major Harlow Fielding-whose mischievous energy reminds Rosemary of her missing sister, Fern. And, yes, before I go on, it is that kind of ‘clever clever’ book. Rosemary is a twenty-two-year-old student at UC Davis and is wrongfully and temporally imprisoned over nothing more substantial than spilt milk. The beginning-middle of Rosemary’s story takes place in 1996 when ‘ten years had passed since I’d last seen my brother, seventeen since my sister disappeared.’ This doesn’t mean that the story isn’t true, only that I honestly don’t know anymore if I really remember it or only remember how to tell it.’ Reader, you have been warned. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves begins in the middle, in what narrator, Rosemary Cooke, freely admits is a play at misdirection and cautions that in her story: ‘the happening and the telling are very different things. That makes this one a little tricky to talk about, and if I sound vague (or vaguer than usual), I’m merely doing my best to avoid mentioning the unmentionable. Savvy readers may spot it before the big reveal, but I’m not going to ruin it for you here. Margot McGovern reviews We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (Penguin, 2013) by Karen Joy Fowler.Ī note before I begin: ‘When there is an invisible elephant in the room, one is from time to time bound to trip over a trunk.’ We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves has a significant twist a little way in.

We are all completely beside ourselves book review