Much of this is communicated via Rosemary’s acute powers of observation – inherited, perhaps, from her scientist father, who conducts work in behavioural science from his tenured position at the local university.
It is about the way in which the children relate to their parents, a distant father and a besotted mother, who in turn seem to have a difficult relationship themselves. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is the story of Rosemary and the family in which she grows up, in particular her two siblings, sister Fern and brother Lowell. Perhaps appropriately in this context, all of the characters behave like rats in a cage – but that doesn’t help the vitality of the narrative, either.
Perhaps this is because the narrative feels over-determined, a fictionalised account of real experiments which can’t quite escape the dragging weight of the points it strives to make with more clarity than the original investigations themselves. But I did make a note in my reading diary and here, gasp, it is:Īn odd novel: it has an effectively turned central twist, and a compelling series of secondary reveals, and yet is never quite as dramatic or as gripping as its structure might wish itself to be. Perhaps as a function of my generally underwhelmed feeling about the book, I didn’t review it at the time. I read Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves a few weeks before it was longlisted for this Booker Prize I confess I didn’t think it had much chance of being shortlisted, and said as much to the nice man behind the desk at my local Waterstones who told me he’d drawn the book in the work sweepstake and yet there it is, shortlisted.
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